[HN Gopher] Tesla's Berlin Hub Can't Hire Enough People, or Keep...
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Tesla's Berlin Hub Can't Hire Enough People, or Keep Them
Author : Markoff
Score : 5 points
Date : 2022-12-07 22:29 UTC (33 minutes ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.co.uk)
| erehweb wrote:
| "In September, the Tesla factory's fire brigade was unable to put
| out a large cardboard fire itself and called in help from local
| firefighters. It then emerged that Tesla had no working fire
| alarms."
| Markoff wrote:
| Tesla's Berlin Hub Can't Hire Enough People, or Keep Them The
| company's staffing problems have been magnified in Germany, where
| it is unable to meet targets as more workers head for the exit.
| An in progress Tesla Model Y is seen in a production hall of the
| Tesla Gigafactory in Berlin
|
| As Elon Musk attempts to manage Twitter after mass layoffs in
| November, his flagship company Tesla is also facing staffing
| problems globally, with vacancies doubling since mid-June,
| coupled with exits at its newest gigafactory in Germany.
|
| When the gigafactory in Berlin opened in March, it had a target
| to produce 5,000 vehicles a week by the end of this year. But it
| is far from reaching its goals after facing major recruitment
| problems--the company has so far managed to hire just 7,000
| people out of a planned 12,000. This lack of personnel is coupled
| with missed ambitious production targets; in 2022 Musk told
| German media he expected to build half a million Teslas in Berlin
| in 2022.
|
| The company is also losing experienced personnel, according to
| former and current employees at the gigafactory. They say that
| current staffers are leaving jobs due to low and unequal pay and
| inexperienced management in the highly competitive German
| manufacturing sector. Tesla did not respond to WIRED's requests
| for comment.
|
| One current employee, who requested anonymity out of fear of
| losing their job, describes the Berlin gigafactory as "total
| chaos." "Some people are off sick longer than they've actually
| worked. There are people who I haven't seen working for three
| weeks in six months. Many people are signed off sick because the
| motivation isn't there," they say, blaming poor working
| conditions. The exits involve temporary staff and permanent
| employees who have been there for over a year, hired before the
| gigafactory opened, they claim.
|
| Worldwide, Tesla reached a record number of vacancies for the
| year in November, listing almost 7,500 jobs. This is double the
| postings in mid-June, according to data from its own website.
| Though most of these vacancies were in the US, Germany was in
| second place, with 386 vacancies advertised at the Berlin plant
| on November 11, including one for a "high-volume recruiter."
|
| Local labor specialists say it is unlikely Tesla will be able to
| find more qualified workers to fill the gap, because it is seen
| as an unattractive employer in the heavily unionized German auto
| sector, and it competes with rival carmaker Volkswagen for
| skilled workers in the Berlin area. The Job Centre in nearby
| Frankfurt (Oder) said on October 4 that Tesla had hired 1,000
| previously unemployed workers already, calling it "the biggest
| recruitment project since reunification," and according to some
| reports, Tesla is already the largest private employer in
| Brandenburg.
|
| According to the German metalworkers union IG Metall, Tesla is
| paying 20 percent less than similar businesses based on staff
| contracts and job descriptions. IG Metall representative Birgit
| Dietze wrote in a press release in June, "We know from active IG
| Metall members that recruitment is not happening at the planned
| speed."
|
| Holger Bonin, research director at the Institute of Labor
| Economics, based in Bonn, said that this was a problem with the
| specialist job market in the country generally, not helped by the
| fact that many qualified workers in the Berlin region can easily
| commute to Volkswagen's main plant in Wolfsburg instead.
|
| "Fundamentally, the German labor market has record employment
| despite coronavirus and inflation. There is a shortage of
| qualified workers everywhere," Bonin says. "Everyone who could be
| employed is already employed. That makes it very difficult to
| fill jobs."
|
| Around 10 percent of the gigafactory's workers are foreign,
| mostly from neighboring Poland. Tesla had hoped to attract more
| Polish workers by advertising Polish-speaking hiring managers at
| the gigafactory, which is just 60 miles from the border. But
| Polish media reports that these hopes have been dashed by Tesla's
| German language requirement.
|
| Staffing is just the latest setback for Tesla's Berlin
| gigafactory, which has already faced a legion of difficulties.
| Before it opened, it faced environmental protests and court
| orders over its construction harming endangered lizards, and
| causing deforestation as well as water contamination.
|
| In September, the Tesla factory's fire brigade was unable to put
| out a large cardboard fire itself and called in help from local
| firefighters. It then emerged that Tesla had no working fire
| alarms.
|
| In the last year, Tesla dropped from being German engineering
| graduates' second preferred employer (behind Google) to sixth. It
| is now behind German car manufacturers like Porsche, with some
| respondents pointing to Elon Musk's comments about firing
| employees who wanted to work from home.
|
| Tesla's Berlin gigafactory reached a production benchmark of
| 2,000 Model Y cars a week at the end of October. This means that
| gigafactory workers have doubled their output since June. But
| even if they continue to increase production at that rate, they
| will still be far off their goal of 5,000 a week by the end of
| the year. This is much lower than the output from the company's
| other gigafactories: Tesla data tracker Troy Teslike points out
| that Giga Shanghai reached 20,000 units in exactly 100 days,
| followed by Giga Texas in 151 days, and Giga Berlin in 187 days.
|
| One of the reasons for this production deficit is the delay of
| the planned full third-shift system to keep the factory running
| 24 hours a day, a source familiar with the matter says. This
| shift was supposed to be implemented in September 2022, but it
| has reportedly been pushed back. This third shift will require
| production workers to change their shift patterns every day,
| across a seven-working-day period. A number of current staff at
| Tesla Grunheide were unhappy about this, complaining that these
| working conditions were not in their contract and saying that it
| exacerbated preexisting staffing problems, the current employee
| says. They blamed numbers-driven recruitment targets. "People in
| HR want to hit their targets for recruitment, so they will say
| anything to get people in, but not pay attention to keeping these
| workers," they say.
|
| One former employee, who left Tesla in September alongside other
| staff members after working there for over a year, describes
| sudden, unannounced changes in working conditions. The former
| employee, who requested anonymity to speak openly, had been
| recruited for a mid-level position via LinkedIn, and had signed a
| contract to move hundreds of miles to Berlin from a smaller
| German city.
|
| Just before they started, the former employee says they received
| an updated contract with a new job title. The initial job
| description had specified that staff must be "willing to work
| weekends and nights determined by project," which they had
| understood to mean occasional nights and weekends in special
| circumstances.
|
| But without any warning, they were given a new job description
| that required them to work early, night, and weekend shifts.
| "After two months they changed my shift to a 24/7 three-shift
| system. I have a young son, and for us it was hard to manage,"
| the former employee says, adding that they had no family support
| available, because they had moved away from family for the job.
| When they complained about this, "there was a lack of empathy"
| from Tesla, and the employee claims they reported inflexibility
| in changing shift plans, even when the factory was not producing
| cars due to machines not functioning, with significantly reduced
| tasks.
|
| Tesla's attempt to improve recruitment and retention by
| increasing pay for new staff also backfired, as longer-term
| employees were being paid less than employees who had just
| arrived doing the same jobs with similar qualifications. This is
| not usually possible in the heavily unionized auto sector in
| Germany, as salaries are usually negotiated according to union
| rates. This caused conflict with the IG Metall union, negative
| press, and accusations from the Confederation of German
| Employers' Associations of "threatening Germany's social
| partnership model" of cooperation between businesses and unions.
| Tesla received threats of legal action from IG Metall, causing it
| to eventually raise overall pay by 6 percent, though the union
| says inequalities remain.
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