Daimler

North Carolina heavy truck and school bus manufacturing workers won 25 percent pay increases and ended wage tiers after an energetic contract campaign and strike threat against Daimler Truck. The United Auto Workers unionized these plants in the 1990s and early 2000s—but since then, wages had stagnated. Starting pay was low, and the plants were stuck on different wage scales. At Thomas Built Buses, the largest school bus manufacturing site in the U.S., assembly workers topped out at $24, $5 less than their counterparts at Daimler’s Mount Holly truck plant. The new contract establishes a common wage grid across all 7,400 workers at the four North Carolina plants, as well as parts distribution centers in Atlanta and Memphis.