The United Auto Workers (UAW) has reached a historic tentative agreement with Daimler Truck ahead of the contract’s expiration at midnight on Friday, April 26, after mounting a massive campaign and strike threat against the multibillion-dollar manufacturer.
Americans are witnessing the historic rebirth of the labor union movement in response to leadership from UAW President Shawn Fain, who has demonstrated that labor unions are not just an interest group but a powerful economic force gaining the heft, solidarity, and passion to become the kind of political movement that they once were — and citizens are responding by declaring ‘it’s about time.’
The four-year agreement delivers major economic gains for 7,300 workers, including more than 25% pay hikes, the end of wage tiers, and the introduction of both profit-sharing and Cost-of-Living (COLA) for the first time since Daimler workers first organized with the UAW.
The deal delivers on the union’s pledge that record profits mean record contracts.
In a direct address to the membership, UAW President Shawn Fain outlined the top lines of the deals and reflected on the historic nature of the fight for justice at Daimler Truck.
“I am honored to be joined by the badass bargaining committee representing over 7,000 members at Daimler Truck North America,” said Fain. “We’re here tonight to announce a major victory for the members who build Freightliner and Western Star trucks and Thomas Built buses.”
“We can hold employers accountable to keep workers safe through stronger contractual language and legislative victories,” said Fain. “We must demand action on critical safety and health protections against preventable workplace hazards. Issues such as heat illness, workplace violence, infectious diseases, silica, toxic chemical exposures, and many others need to be addressed.”
“We will continue to demand more resources from Congress for our nation’s job safety agencies to hold employers accountable and demand the dignity of a safe job at work for everyone,” said Fain.
The UAW announced in November 2023 that it has embarked on an unprecedented campaign to organize roughly 150,000 workers at 13 non-union automakers, including the German Three of Volkswagen, Mercedes, and BMW; the Japanese & Korean Six of Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Hyundai, Subaru, and Mazda; plus American electric vehicle manufacturers Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid.
Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee, who voted this month to join the UAW are the first Southern autoworkers outside of the Big Three to win their union.
Another election at the Mercedes plant in Vance, Alabama will be administered by the National Labor Relations Board from May 13 to 17, when 5,000 Mercedes workers will have an opportunity to join the union.
Should the Mercedes workers vote to unionize, nearly 10,000 autoworkers across the South will have voted to join UAW in less than a month. In addition to Mercedes and Volkswagen, thousands more autoworkers have signed union cards in recent months, with public campaigns at Hyundai in Montgomery, Ala. and Toyota in Troy, Mo. Workers at more than two dozen other facilities are actively organizing.
“We said the company doesn’t get to keep all the profits while the workers who build the product get crumbs,” said Fain.
The workers who build Freightliner trucks, Western Star trucks, and Thomas Built Buses had faced declining real wages and job security even as Daimler Truck tallied record profits and made massive payouts to shareholders.
Over six years, Daimler’s profits increased by 90% while the buying power of the company’s employees had fallen by 13%.
On the heels of the UAW’s historic Stand Up Strike and record contracts with the Big Three automakers, and as tens of thousands of workers across the country continue organizing to join the UAW, Daimler workers accomplished this victory by standing up for equal pay for equal work, cost of living adjustments (COLA), job security and a better future for the American working class.
Fain, an electrician by trade who worked at a Stellantis automotive parts plant in Kokomo, Indiana, has been a UAW member for 29 years, and in March 2023, he was the first UAW president directly elected by the union’s members.
For over seventy years, the UAW was under the complete control of just one party, the Administration Caucus. It wasn’t until the UAW settled a wide-ranging criminal complaint with the Department of Justice in 2020 that union members obtained the right to directly elect the top officers of their union (approved in a referendum supported by 64 percent of the membership).
UAW members promptly threw out the Administration Caucus, engaged in a victorious strike against the Big Three automakers, and launched one of the most ambitious organizing campaigns in recent history.