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Comment by plmoknf | Hacker News Reader

Brutally written "... my employment will be at will and for no definite period, and that my employment may be terminated, at any time, with or without cause and with or without prior notice"

This is such a horrible move by Tesla

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It's going to be interesting to see how it plays out. These sorts of conditions are completely normal in the US. If they are successful at introducing this sort US work culture into Germany I can see many other US tech company will follow suit, and the European tech companies following.

What's the union situation like in Germany? Will they fight it?

No union needed, it's not legal. Getting around the statutory notice period isn't possible, unless the employment is on a temporary basis not exceeding three months. If they had no more than 20 employees, they could limit the notice period to one month, but that's it.

I do not see why it would need unions to fight that. It's just not legal here. It is four weeks minimum period of notice and it increases the longer an employee works for the same employer, up to seven month for twenty years of job tenure. Two weeks during the first six month of new employees.

Other agreements can be made but only if it improves the situation of the employee.

German: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__622.html

Couldn't Tesla agreed to pay out 4 weeks of salary instead.

Four weeks is the legal minimum if you've worked at a German company for two years. Plus the notice period, which is often three months for software developers.

Such things are possible if both sides agree on an annulment contract. Tesla themselves could not do that on their own. (The employee should better be aware that they still forfeit unemployment benefits if they do not announce their leaving of a job to the unemployment office in advance.)

No expert but I doubt this is possible in Germany. I suspect that they have not updated their jobs website to match specific jurisdictions and that this sentence has no value in this case.

Where does it say that? I don't see this or parts of this sentence on the linked website.

This is how the linked page looks like for me: https://imgur.com/a/x0Xuiau

I assume it comes up if you go deeper into the process, and you can't share that page with the public. Not sure, though, as I'm not about to go apply for a job just to verify a vague HN post...

https://imgur.com/a/gqXGw1S

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