The company had identified about 200 members of staff who were still being paid but had not turned up for work at all this year. “They submit a new sicknote from the doctor at least every six weeks,” he said.
…then you don’t have to pay them. Company is on the hook for the first six weeks, then the health insurance, then disability, and you can generally terminate people after those six weeks.
In short: You should fire management for gross incompetence. Can’t blame a worker for getting paid more because of company stupidity.
Or, different angle: They really must be desperate for workers if they’re trying to retain those people. Paying well and having good working conditions would be a way to achieve that, yet another reason to fire management, up to and including Musk, for gross incompetence.
German law. To be more precise for a court to accept a company’s claim that continued employment would be an undue burden they want to see a) at least six weeks in a year b) negative prognosis, and c) how impactful the whole thing is for things like scheduling, that also depends on company size. Seniority also plays into it but noone at Tesla has any kind of seniority. That is, if healing from a burst appendix takes seven weeks no you don’t have a case because appendices don’t tend to burst twice, if your employee first breaks their leg and then goes base jumping again and breaks their arm and then does it again and breaks the other leg, different topic.
Companies are of course not forced to terminate you and a car manufacturer might be well-advised to retain a hard to replace star engineer, a random replaceable accountant, not so much.
IG Metall has a page about it. It also pays to pay your union dues because they all come with legal insurance. Thinking of it IG Metall might have the second largest army of lawyers in the world, right after Oracle.