How did the biggest contract offer Mack Trucks ever tendered its United Auto Workers-represented employees get trashed and result in a strike?
Two catalysts may be responsible.
One is the so-called rank-and-file committees, workers who claim socialism as their mantra. Through the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS), they regularly attack union leaders at the local and international levels. They call them toadies for management who bring secretly negotiated, substandard contracts to members incentivized with a signing bonus.
The other is the ongoing UAW strike at the Detroit Three automakers. For the first time, the UAW simultaneously targeted all three companies — General Motors, Ford and Stellantis. It has targeted specific plants to strike, so far avoiding hugely profitable pickup truck plants. About 17%, or 25,000, of 146,000 UAW members are currently on strike.
Watching the UAW strike in Detroit
Goaded into striking or not, Mack workers are watching the Detroit negotiations. They hope for a contract similar to what is eventually reached.
The UAW claims significant gains in negotiations since the autoworkers’ strike began Sept. 15. The union twice expanded the strike against specific companies. On Friday, it decided against another widening because GM conceded to extend the UAW master agreement to its battery plants. Several of those plants have yet to hire workers.
The union has expressed concern that electric vehicles (EVs) the companies are pursuing will threaten job security. EVs have fewer parts and require less assembly time than internal combustion engines.
Mack builds a small number of electric trucks at its plant in Lower Macungie in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. The company is planning an electric version of its medium-duty MD Series. Internal combustion engine versions of those trucks are built at a nonunion plant in Roanoke, Virginia.
Volvo Group workers at parts distribution centers in Jacksonville, Florida, and Baltimore are on strike. So is an engine plant in Hagerstown, Maryland, that makes powertrains for Volvo and Mack Trucks. Mack is a part of Volvo Group North America, the only truck maker that builds all its North American products in the U.S.
Watch now: In rejecting new contract, are Mack Truck workers hitching their hopes to Detroit Three negotiations?
UAW demands COLA increases and end of 2-tier wages
UAW President Shawn Fain has said Ford and Stellantis have agreed to restart a cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA) formula that the union conceded in 2009 during the Great Recession. The union also is determined to end dual-tier wages in which new workers are hired below the wage of existing workers. The UAW agreed to two-tier wages in 2007.
Neither COLA nor two-tier wages were addressed in the tentative agreement at Mack, which the WSWS has pointed out repeatedly.
“Inflation is up 22% in the last 3yrs. This contract we’re getting a 19% raise but over 5 yrs,” the WSWS posted on X, formerly Twitter.
The tentative agreement was rejected Sunday by 73% of workers who voted. The tentative local agreement for the Mack assembly plant would have added 30 minutes to the workday with workers earning an average of $3,000 more a year before master contract economics. The WSWS said that extra work should be paid at overtime rates.
“The UAW called our tentative agreement ‘a record contract for the Heavy Truck industry,’ and we trust that other stakeholders also appreciate that our market, business, and competitive set are very different from those of the passenger car makers,” Mack President Stephen Roy said in a news release.
The auto industry collectively builds millions of vehicles in the U.S. every year compared with trucking, which produces several hundred thousand vehicles annually. Both industries are cyclical. Automakers mostly sell to franchised dealers that target individual consumers. Truck manufacturers work directly with fleets and deliver products through dealers.
The Lehman factor
Mack worker Will Lehman, who ran against Fain for the UAW International presidency earlier this year, addressed workers at a contract review meeting on Saturday, calling for greater transparency in contract negotiations.
Lehman unsuccessfully sued to halt the runoff that Fain won over incumbent President Ray Curry in May. He denounced Fain for “acting like he stands with us” after having “tried to ram through a pay cut, sellout tentative agreement on the workers at Mack Trucks.”
“This is the kind of contract that gets negotiated behind closed doors,” Lehman told workers gathered in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on Saturday. “There needs to be full transparency to all the workers, and as far as the vote count goes that needs to be made transparent to the workers as well.”
Watch now: Will Lehman addresses Mack workers, urging defeat of tentative UAW agreement
Labor leaders urging passage of tentative agreements carry less weight among workers than they have historically. UAW workers at Mack sibling Volvo Truck North America (VTNA) rejected three tentative agreements in 2021 before Volvo put terms of its final offer into effect after a split vote on the third offer.
Now Mack appears to be following that play and castigating local bargainers and the company for trying to buy labor peace with a $3,500 signing bonus.
The WSWS accused Mack of seeking a five-year agreement so future bargaining would be out of sync with the expiration of automaker contracts that expire after four years. In 2019, Mack workers struck for 12 days while the UAW was on strike against GM. There’s no evidence the Mack settlement was influenced by the GM strike.
Related articles:
UAW employees will strike at Mack Trucks after rejecting contract
Report: UAW members get 19% pay increase across 5 years
Ken Kramer
I did read an article yesterday 10/21/23 that the Mack Truck strike was over, and worker’s were to be sceduled to return to work. I really don’t believe anything from the MSM so I and the wife drove on down to Macungie for a personal look see So as of 2:35 pm on 10/21/23 this is what we seen. The picket line’s are maned, signs are still up, tents still up, this is at the plant, J&E storage yard, warehouses, all the Mack facilities in the Macungie area. And we stopped at the WaWa across the street. And seen a few Mack employees we know. As far as they know….. The strike is still on.
Brandon
“Alan Adler is an award-winning journalist who worked for The Associated Press and the Detroit Free Press. He also spent two decades in domestic and international media relations and executive communications with General Motors.”
Oh yeah, this is totally the dude you want to trust to make an objective observation on a fair wage and workers rights. Workers are tired of their hard work being siphoned off by management and shareholders for decades, and hopefully the “socialism boogeyman” idea used to convince workers they do not deserve what they have earned through their hard work will die off with the Boomers. If legacy auto and other manufacturers don’t want to provide fair compensation, let their business die.
Kenny Hall
Dear Freight waves:
boo!
A Socialist
David
Let’s remember people, a UNION is not a business and does not produce a product. A union is NOTHING other than a political campaign fundraiser. The union uses the dues of hardworking people to elect the democratic socialists referred to above. It’s a vicious cycle that can only broken by VOTERS. The low point was seeing Biden on the picket line. First to ever for a sitting president. Of course he probably thought he was in line to get an ice cream cone.
Jeff Anderson
This Freightwaves is just a management tool. They never look at Union labors views. I’m a Yellow left over worker. I don’t really know my status. I was a UAW worker at GM and a UAW driver at Ryder for Saturn. I have worked on 8 labor contracts. I agree that negotiations need to be transparent. I never liked the questions after a contract was ratified. I would give updates to my membership after the conclusion of the day. The bitiching would always come from the least active members. My response would be come to a monthly meeting and tell me there. I knew who showed up because I was the recording secretary and kept the attendance sign in sheets. This rag that I do peruse has no right to point fingers at any group of that Local. Socialism is the basis of a Union. Everyone being treat the same, paid the same, progressive discipline procedure, grievance procedure.
Richard M Rehmer
I fail to understand the unions, period. You strike when the economy is doing great, not when inflation is out of this world, and we are facing a possible recession. Is the UAW leadership that out of touch with reality like the Teamsters? As a matter of fact, in my opinion, the Union has become far too powerful for its own good and political. The membership drive for more money, better working hours, and so on may well be the incentive to put more robots on the line to replace so-called skilled workers. What will happen is Mack will settle, and the consumer will pay for it. John L. Lewis must be rolling in his grave at how out of control his union idea has gotten. Welcome to the new world, people. It screws the consumer because the WORKERS’ PARTY (That’s what unions are called in Communist China) wants more than the average worker gets for the same skill in America and does less work to get it.
Victor
The very nature of unions is socialism. Look at the terms they use. Collective bargaining (Collectivism), fair share (Never have gotten a definition of what that is), union local (Similar to the committees of the Communist Revolution)…..look at the way the classes are divided (Management/owners vs workers). Unions demanding ownership of companies. No incentive to do any more than required (The hallmark of communist economics. Meet your quota and keep your head down.).
Unions had a place in the world at one time but they’ve also been instrumental in driving our production economy out of the country.
Freight Zippy
Wow the Democrat Socialists have certainly been busy this week. Besides instigating this strike here in NYC these Democrat Socialists ‘celebrated’ the deaths and hostage taking in Israel on Sunday. I happen to pass by TImes Square and witnessed the dancing and celebration of the terror attacks.
Yet Americas Unions take direction from these people??
Do America’s Unions care about America???