Tesla (TSLA) shares were active Friday after officials in Germany gave the carmaker's key Berlin gigafactory conditional approval to begin operations in the coming weeks.
The move, which follows months of negotiations with Environmental officials and the German state of Brandenburg, follows Elon Musk's decision to allow the United Auto Workers' Union to hold a vote on membership at its California gigafactory.
In a decision that reversed years of opposition from Musk, as well as criticism from President Joe Biden, the Tesla founder told his 76 million Twitter followers that the company "will do nothing to stop" the UAW from holding a membership vote "at their convenience."
The UAW would need to show that 30% of the Freemont workforce had signed a petition seeking a union vote, and then get a majority to agree to formal unionization.
Musk has clashed with the Biden administration over its repeated assertions that EV subsidies should favor manufacturers with union-lead workforces, and its fighting legal action with the U.S. National Labor Relations Board over alleged threats to remove stock options from employees who voted to join a union.
Tesla shares were marked 1.3% lower in early trading, against a 2.25% decline for the Nasdaq, to change hands at $828.20 each, a move that would extend the stock's year-to-date decline to around 30%.
Musk's newly-sanguine attitude to UAW activity in California could be linked the German state of Brandenburg's decision to approve his company's permit for a $5.5 billion manufacturing facility in Berlin later today.
Under German federal law, companies with over 2,000 employees must have at least half of their supervisory board seats filled by workers' representatives.
Tesla cautioned earlier this year that supply-chain disruptions have held back production capacity and will impact the pace of near-term output, a warning that took some of the gloss from a record fourth quarter, which saw revenues rise 65% from last year to an-all time high of $17.72 billion.
"The pace of growth in 2022 will, again, be determined by supply chain and logistics, which is quite difficult for us to forecast," CFO Zach Kirkhorn told investors on a conference call in late January. "Despite these constraints, it's important to begin the ramp of Austin and Berlin to ensure that we are prepared once limitations ease, enabling us to increase total output more quickly in the future."
