Elon Musk’s mass notice: Mails probably also went to Germany

Disclosed from one day to the next: Tens of thousands of people who had previously been employed in federal authorities in the United States. Elon Musk got the task of putting on the state apparatus from the US President Donald Trump as part of the Efficiency Program Doge (Department of Government Efficiency) and saving money.

Actually, you had assumed that it should only affect people in the United States. However, according to Verdi, the termination could now also threaten German civil workers who work for the United States in the Federal Republic.

A large part of them works in Germany for the American armed forces who are stationed in Germany. According to Verdi, 12,000 Germans are overall. Some of them have now obviously contained an email from their employers, in which they are asked about the scope of their tasks.

You should list five points that you worked out the previous week, said Verdi union secretary Susanne Schäfer. If you don’t do this, you have to expect a termination.

The employees in the United States also received a corresponding email before they were terminated, which had followed an announcement by Elon Musk. This email allegedly went to around two million people.

According to Susanne Schäfer, Verdi had not assumed that she would also go to German employees in Germany: “We were assured in the ongoing collective bargaining that such a request would not be sent to German civil workers.” Verdi is just legally checking the situation, said Schäfer of the “Saarbrücker Zeitung”.

With the armed forces in Rhineland-Palatinate, the union is in the clinch anyway and demands more money for German employees. According to Susanne Schäfer, they only paid the employees a little more than the minimum wage applicable in Germany.