An eActros is unveiled at Daimler Truck AG’s Mercedes-Benz truck plant on October 7, 2021.
Uli Deck | image alliance | Getty Images
Daimler truck agreed to a new labor contract Friday with more than 7,300 hourly workers represented by the United Auto Workers (UAW) at six facilities in the US South, averting an 11th-hour strike.
“For months, we’ve been saying that record earnings should mean a record contract without concessions,” UAW President Shawn Fain said in a late-night YouTube appearance from Charlotte, North Carolina, near where the company has factories.
“Determination and solidarity got us through,” he said of the tentative agreement, which workers have yet to ratify.
Daimler Truck, which makes Freightliner and Western Star trucks and Thomas Built buses, had faced a possible strike starting at midnight ET.
Daimler Truck said in a statement: “UAW members … will now be asked to vote on the new contracts and we hope to finalize them soon, to the mutual benefit of all parties.”
The deal at the German truck maker, which was spun off from the current Mercedes automaker, comes just three weeks before votes on whether to join the UAW will be counted at a Mercedes assembly plant in Alabama.
Fain’s speech on Friday started nearly an hour later than scheduled as Daimler Truck made late concessions, Fain explained. Several times during talks last fall with the three Detroit automakers — General Motors, Ford and Stellantis — the threat of a deadline led the companies to make concessions to avoid extending the strike.
Under Friday’s agreement, Daimler Truck workers will receive a minimum across-the-board wage increase of 25 percent over the course of the four-year contract, Fain said. This would match what the Detroit Three workers received.
When the deal is ratified, Fain said members will receive an immediate 10 percent pay raise, followed by 3 percent raises six months and 12 months later.
They will also receive cost-of-living adjustments to offset inflation and profit-sharing, both a first at Daimler Truck, and at the end of pay scales that paid those bus drivers less than those who make heavy trucks, he said.
Lower-paid workers at Thomas Built will see raises of more than $8 an hour, and some skilled trades at that facility will see raises of more than $17 an hour, Fain said.
The deal also includes increased job security and improved health and safety benefits, he said.
About 96 percent of Daimler Truck workers at four plants in North Carolina and parts warehouses in Georgia and Tennessee voted in March to strike.
The union had also filed unfair labor practice charges with the US National Labor Relations Board against the company, citing violations of workers’ rights and federal labor laws and failure to bargain in good faith.
Since last fall’s deals with the Detroit Three, the UAW has turned its efforts to organizing non-union plants in the U.S. with more than a dozen automakers.
The UAW won a historic victory at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, last week, and workers at a Mercedes plant in Vance, Alabama, are set to vote on whether to join the union the week of May 13.