After scoring what the union called historic labor contract wins across the U.S. automotive manufacturing sector, and kicking off a nearly month-and-a-half long work stoppage at Mack Trucks facilities in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Florida last year, the United Auto Workers (UAW) union on Thursday set its sights on trucking marketshare leader Daimler Truck North America (DTNA).
UAW said the almost 7,000 UAW members who build Freightliner and Western Star trucks and Thomas Built Buses "are gearing up for a historic contract fight," when their current labor contract expires at 12:01 a.m. Friday, April 26. The agreement covers workers at six DTNA facilities in North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee.
[Related: 'Leave us alone': Union labor and trucking]
A strike among DTNA union members is not imminent, however. With about eight weeks left to hammer out a new deal, UAW Communications Director Jonah Furman told CCJ Thursday that contract language negotiations have begun for most of the locals, and local members have not yet held a vote to authorize a strike.
"We look forward to continuing good faith CBA negotiations with our UAW partners," DTNA told CCJ via emailed statement Thursday afternoon.
In a media campaign launched Thursday morning, UAW workers at DTNA sites in Cleveland, Mount Holly, Gastonia and High Point, North Carolina, laid bare their frustration with a workplace that's "not like it used to be." Employees interviewed for the campaign by UAW cited the need to work additional jobs to make ends meet, wages out of synch with the pace of inflation, and a lack of job security, among other concerns.
