Daimler Truck, the heavy-truck maker, is on the brink of a strike as it negotiates a new labour contract with over 7,300 hourly workers across six facilities in the U.S. South. The United Auto Workers (UAW) union has set a deadline for the end of Friday for a new agreement to be reached, failing which a strike could be imminent.
UAW President Shawn Fain noted the workers’ demands for higher pay, the institution of cost-of-living adjustments, and greater job security in a speech circulated online earlier this week. “Workers’ wages at Daimler have not kept up,” Fain said. “The workers are going to come for their fair share. In the new UAW, we don’t take concessions. We raise standards for everyone and we fight for what we deserve, and we’re not afraid to strike to get it.”
Fain is set to hold a press conference at 10 pm ET to announce whether a strike will proceed, just ahead of the midnight ET deadline. The UAW’s approach under Fain has been assertive, seeking significant raises and other concessions from companies for its members. Last fall, the UAW secured substantial payouts, including 25% pay raises over the life of new deals, at the Detroit Three automakers – General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis.
At Daimler Truck, which manufactures Freightliner and Western Star trucks and Thomas Built buses, approximately 96% of workers at four factories in North Carolina, along with parts warehouses in Georgia and Tennessee, voted in March to authorize a strike. The union has also filed unfair labour practice charges with the U.S. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) against the company, citing violations of workers’ rights and federal labor laws, as well as failure to bargain in good faith.
Daimler Truck has yet to respond to requests for comment on the matter. Since the successful negotiations last fall with the Detroit Three, the UAW has shifted its focus to organizing non-union U.S. plants of more than a dozen automakers.
Recently, the UAW achieved a significant victory at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and workers at a Mercedes factory in Vance, Alabama, are set to vote on whether to join the labour union during the week of May 13, according to a Reuters report.
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