While German companies worry about the four-day week, they should see AI as an industry, not one european There is an AI regulator at the level, and they themselves spend a lot of energy and time tracking their supply chain down to the last branch, it’s the leading US companies that are investing in this country on a very large scale. These are the ones who often face criticism in this country because of their capitalist structures. We are talking
Billions invested by three mega corporations
All three have announced, and this is good news, that they will be investing heavily in Germany. The American retail and technology group Amazon, founded and grown by Jeff Bezos, recently announced that it will invest another ten billion euros in its business in Germany. Most of this will be spent on cloud Internet services, that is, on outsourced mainframes using a data storage network. A smaller portion will go toward expanding logistics, robotics and two new corporate headquarters. Amazon’s German workforce is expected to grow to 40,000 full-time employees by the end of the year, rising to 36,000 in 2023.
Tesla built its first European factory in Grünheide, near Berlin, and spent almost six billion euros in the process. The factory can produce up to 500,000 cars per year. TeslaBoss Elon Musk also wants to build a battery factory on the site. Industry circles are talking about investments that will again be in the single-digit billion range. So far, some 12,000 people at the Grünheide plant are building cars that have already advanced electromobility further than competitors’ efforts have ever achieved.
A semiconductor manufacturer wants to build two factories in Magdeburg
In the end, Intel won the big poker and now has to fulfill its obligation. the semiconductor manufacturer wants to build two plants in Magdeburg and is reportedly investing around 30 billion euros, ten billion of which will come from the federal government as subsidies. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger wants to expand the company to become the world’s No. 2 chip maker. just behind the current market leader TSMC: From Taiwan.
The three US giants alone spend about 50 billion in this country. One, Amazon, is building the data storage capacity of tomorrow, another is the mobility of the future, and the third is manufacturing the necessary hardware. If there are entrepreneurs who take risks based on the belief that they are doing the right thing, their name is Bezos. Amazon and also Pat Gelsinger, who as a working manager is responsible for the Magdeburg decision. In terms of market capitalization on the stock exchange, all three companies together exceed 40 in the German stock index. Dax wander around, away. They are the ones who get things done in Germany, where others complain, get lost in the bureaucracy or have thoughts of running away.
Criticism instead of praise
And yet, they are not mentioned, but rather viewed with suspicion. Take Amazon for example. news of the latest investment decision fills the side columns, and reports of problematic working conditions regularly make the top stories. Sometimes it’s about the poor conditions of the drivers, sometimes it’s about the bonus, which is paid for as few sick days as possible. Amazon has repeatedly been accused of using aggressive methods to fight rival providers, sometimes in legal gray areas. Meanwhile, Amazon uses its market power to dictate the same prices to sellers with higher fees. Amazon’s tax avoidance practices are almost legendary. Anyone reading this should think that the same standards apply to a company as to a ward around a village.
Tesla is met with hostility because the factory uses a lot of water. The head of the local water association can be quoted theatrically. “Drinking water supply is being sacrificed at the table of economic policy.” cut the factory by arson last year. All the protesters together want to “shut down Tesla”. “Green capitalism is a dirty lie,” they chant on the posters.
A collective bargaining agreement will not work
And about Intel, Mathias von Grabov, an educational scientist from Magdeburg and the chairman of the board working for a company, knew a year ago that collective bargaining probably wouldn’t work. In the Journal of Socialist Society and Trade Labor, he published a long article about the “challenges” that American companies such as Intel, as well as Tesla and Amazon, present to German unions.
He criticizes the recent fraud of corporate America, which no longer wants to simply block the creation of works councils, but rather to promote them in a targeted manner and to nominate candidates suitable to the companies. Grabo indignantly calls what others might interpret as employee freedom of choice “an erosion of the work of the works council.” The author offers advice on how to take down Intel and Co. “Unions have an opportunity to capitalize on capital’s fear of a shortage of skilled workers within society and within companies. After all, there is an opportunity to force individual companies to sign collective agreements.
Best-selling author and self-confessed fan of capitalism, Rainer Zietelmann, summed up his opinion in light of the protests against Tesla and Co.: capitalists are destroying and preventing climate protection.”