On October 7, 2021, an eActros will be unveiled at the Mercedes-Benz truck factory of Daimler Truck AG.
Uli Dek | photo alliance | Getty Images
Daimler truck on Friday agreed to a new labor contract with more than 7,300 hourly workers represented by the United Auto Workers (UAW) at six facilities in the southern US, averting an eleventh-hour strike.
“For months we've been saying that record profits should mean a no-concessions record deal,” UAW President Shawn Fain said in a late-night appearance on YouTube from Charlotte, North Carolina, near where the company has factories.
“Our determination and solidarity have paid off,” he said of the preliminary agreement, which workers have yet to ratify.
Daimler Truck, which makes Freightliner and Western Star trucks and Thomas Built buses, faced the possibility of a strike starting at midnight ET.
Daimler Truck said in a statement: “The 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 with the German truck maker, which was spun off from what is now automaker Mercedes, 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 almost an hour later than planned because Daimler Truck made late concessions, Fain explained. During talks last fall with the three Detroit automakers — General Motors, Ford and Stellantis — the threat of a deadline prompted the companies several times to make concessions to prevent the strike's expansion.
Under Friday's deal, Daimler Trucks employees will receive an overall pay increase of at least 25% over the four-year contract, Fain said. That would match what the workers of the Detroit Three received.
If the deal is finalized, Fain says members will receive an immediate 10% pay increase, followed by a 3% increase six months and 12 months later.
They will also receive cost-of-living adjustments to offset inflation and profit sharing, both for the first time at Daimler Truck, and the end of pay scales that paid those who built buses less than those who built heavy trucks, he said.
The lowest-paid workers at Thomas Built will see a pay increase of more than $8 per hour and some skilled workers at that unit will see an increase of more than $17 per hour, Fain said.
The deal also includes greater job security and better health and safety benefits, he said.
About 96% of Daimler Truck workers at four plants in North Carolina and parts warehouses in Georgia and Tennessee had voted in March to authorize a strike.
The union also filed unfair labor practice charges with the U.S. National Labor Relations Board against the company, citing violations of employee rights and federal labor laws, and for failing to bargain in good faith.
Since last fall's deals with the Detroit Three, the UAW has focused its efforts on organizing non-union U.S. factories of more than a dozen automakers.
The UAW won a historic victory last week at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and workers at a Mercedes plant in Vance, Alabama, will vote the week of May 13 on whether to join the union.
