Tesla’s Grünheide factory manager just escalated the company’s war with Germany’s most powerful industrial union to a new level. André Thierig, the plant director at Giga Berlin, says an external IG Metall representative was caught secretly recording an internal works council meeting today, and Tesla called the police.

The Fact: Tesla filed a criminal complaint after an IG Metall guest at a works council meeting was caught recording using a laptop computer.
The Delta: IG Metall fired back immediately, calling Tesla’s account a “calculated lie” designed to influence the upcoming March works council election.
The Stakes: This incident comes weeks before a works council election that Thierig has explicitly said will determine whether Tesla’s U.S. leadership continues investing in the Berlin plant.

Thierig calls police, IG Metall calls it a “calculated lie”

André Thierig is Tesla’s factory manager at Giga Berlin-Brandenburg in Grünheide, Germany, overseeing the company’s only European manufacturing plant and its roughly 12,500 employees. He posted about the incident on X within hours of it happening.

“What has happened today at Giga Berlin is truly beyond words,” Thierig wrote. “An external union representative from IG Metall attended a works council meeting. For unknown reasons he recorded the internal meeting and was caught in action! We obviously called police and filed a criminal complaint!”

According to a Reuters report, the IG Metall member had attended the works council meeting as a guest and began recording with his computer. Under German law, works council meetings are non-public events, and recording one without consent is a criminal offense.

IG Metall, Germany’s largest industrial union with over two million members, didn’t mince words in its response. The union called Tesla’s statement a “calculated lie” timed to influence the works council elections scheduled for March. IG Metall repeated its position that plant management wants to keep the union out in favor of what it called “obedient labour representation.”

The March election is the real battleground

Today’s incident didn’t happen in a vacuum. Giga Berlin’s works council election, scheduled for March, is shaping up to be the most consequential labor vote in Tesla’s history. Thierig has been explicit about the stakes. In late December, he drew a “red line” against IG Metall’s push for a 35-hour workweek and tied the election outcome directly to Tesla’s future investment in the plant.

“Personally, I cannot imagine that the decision-makers in the USA will continue to push ahead with the factory expansion if the election results favor IG Metall,” Thierig said at the time.

In the 2024 election, IG Metall candidates won the most individual votes (3,516) but non-union representatives secured a majority of seats overall. The union has been working to flip that result in March. This recording incident, regardless of the facts, gives both sides ammunition. Tesla gets to paint IG Metall as untrustworthy. IG Metall gets to frame Tesla as manufacturing outrage to scare workers away from the union before the vote.

EVXL’s Take

The timing here is impossible to ignore. Both sides know it. A criminal complaint over a recording, filed weeks before the most high-stakes works council election Giga Berlin has ever faced, is a political act regardless of whether the recording actually happened as described.

We’ve been documenting Tesla’s European sales collapse all year. The company’s EU market share halved to 1.3% in 2025 while the broader EV market grew 27%. We’ve covered the 60% German sales drop, the global sales crisis, and the consecutive months of European decline. Electrek asked in January whether Giga Berlin’s days are numbered, calling the plant “a financial bleed.” And just weeks ago, we reported on Giga Berlin’s 1,700 “missing” workers.

Here’s what I think is really going on. Thierig is fighting a two-front war. On one side, he needs to keep IG Metall from winning the March election. On the other, he needs to convince Tesla’s Austin headquarters that Giga Berlin is worth continued investment despite cratering European demand. Today’s criminal complaint serves both goals at once. It discredits the union and demonstrates to American leadership that management is actively protecting the non-union status quo.

If IG Metall wins the March election, expect Tesla to use it as justification to freeze Giga Berlin’s expansion. They’ve already laid the rhetorical groundwork. The question isn’t whether this recording incident matters legally. It’s whether it shifts enough worker sentiment before the vote.

Editorial Note: AI tools were used to assist with research and archive retrieval for this article. All reporting, analysis, and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.