Bosses at Tesla's German Gigafactory are reportedly knocking on some workers' doors when they're at home sick

• Tesla workers have received home visits from managers when out sick, a German newspaper reported.

• Handelsblatt said illness rates at the Berlin Gigafactory were over three times the industry average.

• Elon Musk has said he'll investigate the high sick-leave rates.

Some Tesla workers have received visits at home from managers while off sick, the German newspaper Handelsblatt reported, citing a recording of an internal meeting.

When receiving such visits, Handelsblatt said, some workers threatened to call the police, and others slammed the door in the managers' faces.

The newspaper reported that this coincided with the rate of employees at Tesla's Berlin Gigafactory who called in sick jumping to 17% in August — more than three times the average for the German auto industry last year.

Dirk Schulze, a regional chief at the German metalworkers' union IG Metall, told Bloomberg the apparent home visits were "absurd."

He added that Tesla workers were reporting "extremely high workloads," with management pressuring those who were out sick as healthy employees were overloaded with additional work.

Elon Musk has said he'll investigate the report.

"This sounds crazy. Looking into it," Musk replied to the X user Alex Tourville, who shared a synopsis of Handelsblatt's report.

In January, Musk warned Tesla workers to prepare for a ramped-up workload as he previewed plans for a mass-market electric vehicle.

"We really need the engineers to be living on the line," the billionaire told investors on an earnings call. "We'll be sleeping on the line, practically. Not practically, we will be."

A former worker at Tesla's factory in Fremont, California, told The Verge that employees would sleep on the floor after 12-hour shifts.

Tesla didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

This isn't the first time Musk has grown concerned about employees' absences.

In 2022, shortly after he took over Twitter, Musk complained that because the company's San Francisco headquarters was about 90% empty, its free-lunch perk cost it more than $400 a meal. That office has now been closed, with the company's HQ relocated to Austin.

Read the original article on Business Insider