The eActros was unveiled on October 7, 2021 at the Mercedes-Benz Trucks plant of Daimler Truck AG.
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Daimler Trucks Six southern U.S. plants reached new labor contracts on Friday with more than 7,300 hourly workers represented by the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, averting an 11-hour strike.
“We’ve been saying for months that record profits should Meaning a record contract with no concessions.
“Our determination and solidarity have been achieved,” he said of the tentative deal, which still needs to be approved by workers.
Daimler Truck, which makes Freightliner trucks, Western Star trucks and Thomasbuilt buses, had faced the possibility of a strike starting at midnight Eastern time.
Daimler Trucks said in a statement: “UAW members… will now be asked to vote on the new contract, which we hope to finalize as quickly as possible to the mutual benefit of all parties.”
The German truck maker was spun off from what is now automaker Mercedes, just three weeks before a Mercedes assembly plant in Alabama is set to vote on whether to join the United Auto Workers union.
Fein explained that Fein’s speech on Friday was almost an hour later than scheduled due to a late concession from Daimler Trucks. Last fall, in negotiations with Detroit’s Big Three automakers – General Motors, Ford and Strantis – the threat of a deadline led the companies to make repeated concessions to avoid a wider strike.
Fain said under the deal reached on Friday, Daimler Truck workers’ wages would rise by at least 25% over four-year contracts. That’s comparable to what workers at Detroit’s Big Three are getting.
Fain said members would receive a 10 per cent pay increase immediately upon approval of the agreement, followed by 3 per cent pay increases after six and 12 months.
He said they would also get a cost-of-living adjustment to offset inflation and profit sharing, a first for Daimler Truck AG, and an end to lower wages for building buses than for building heavy-duty trucks.
Fain said Thomasbuilt’s lowest-paid workers will receive a raise of more than $8 an hour, and some of the department’s skilled workers will receive a raise of more than $17 an hour.
He said the agreement also included increased job security and improved health and safety benefits.
About 96% of Daimler Trucks workers at four plants in North Carolina and parts warehouses in Georgia and Tennessee voted in March to authorize a strike.
The union also filed unfair labor practice charges against the company with the National Labor Relations Board, arguing that the company violated worker rights and federal labor laws and failed to negotiate in good faith.
Since striking a deal with the Detroit Three last fall, the UAW has shifted its focus to organizing more than a dozen automakers’ non-union U.S. plants.
The UAW scored a historic victory last week at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., and workers at a Mercedes plant in Vance, Ala., will vote the week of May 13 on whether to unionize.
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