Elon Musk sent a pre-recorded video message to Tesla's 10,700 employees at the Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg in Grünheide, warning that the planned expansion of the factory will not take place if IG Metall gains influence in the upcoming works council elections.
See also: Tesla "cuts" 1,700 jobs at Berlin Gigafactory
The threat comes just days before the crucial vote and amid an escalating conflict between Tesla management and Germany's most powerful industrial union.
According to German newspaper Handelsblatt, which obtained audio recordings of the video, Musk avoided directly mentioning IG Metall, but left no doubt about his goal. He warned that “things will definitely become more difficult if there are external organizations pushing Tesla in the wrong direction.” He was more explicit about the consequences: “We will not close the factory, but realistically we will not expand it either.”
The pre-recorded conversation was conducted by Grünheide plant manager Andre Thierigwith Musk in Austin, Texas. On Wednesday, it was played to factory workers in Thierig’s presence. It’s not the first time Thierig has delivered this message. He told German news agency DPA late last year that he “cannot imagine that decision-makers in the US will continue to push for the plant expansion if the election results are overwhelmingly in favor of IG Metall.”
The timing is deliberate. Around 10,700 workers in Grünheide will elect a new works council in the coming days. IG Metall is currently the largest party on the works council but does not have a majority, as other lists have joined forces against it.
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Tensions between Tesla and IG Metall have been rising for months and recently escalated into a full-scale conflict. The union accused Tesla of creating a “toxic” work environment and filed a defamation complaint against Thierig with the public prosecutor’s office. In response, Tesla filed its own criminal complaint, accusing an IG Metall representative of secretly recording a works council meeting, and the company called in the police to seize the representative’s laptop.
IG Metall called Tesla’s approach “both transparent and undemocratic.” Tesla’s works council group in the union described the secret recording accusation as “a brazen and calculated falsehood.”
Tesla also organized an anti-union concert for Giga Berlin workers in December, featuring German rapper Kool Savas and a Cybertruck, in an event that was essentially a rally against IG Metall representation.
The threat of expansion seems hollow when you consider the real state of Giga Berlin. Tesla has quietly cut about 1,700 jobs at the factory over the past year, while factory manager Thierig denies that any staff reductions are taking place.
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The factory is capable of producing over 375,000 Model Ys annually, but Tesla sold only about 235,000 vehicles in total in Europe in 2025, a 28% decline, including Model 3s imported from China. In Germany in particular, registrations collapsed by 48% to just 19,390 units in 2025. The decline continued in 2026, with Tesla's EU registrations falling by 17% in January, while the broader European BEV market grew by 14%.
