United Auto Workers members at Mack Trucks will get a 19% pay increase across five years of a new agreement while production workers at Mack’s main assembly plant will work 30 minutes more a day to help the company build more trucks. Production workers would earn about $3,000 more a year in addition to the new money in a tentative master agreement up for ratification voting on Sunday.
According to a Reuters report Thursday, the new master agreement covering about 3,900 workers also calls for a $3,500 signing bonus, improved retirement benefits, additional vacation for some employees and a reduction in the time needed to get to top pay. Workers also would get an additional $1,000 contribution to their 401K accounts. An immediate 10% pay hike would be effective upon ratification.
The tentative agreement at Mack calls for less than half the 40% pay increase the UAW demanded before striking the Detroit 3 automakers — General Motors, Ford and Stellantis — on Sept. 15.
Extra 30 minutes a day for Mack production workers
A provision in the UAW Local 677 agreement would allow Mack’s 2,300 workers in Lower Macungie, Pennsylvania, to build at least 1,600 more trucks a year. The plant builds all of Mack’s Class 8 models, including a battery-electric version of the Mack LR refuse truck. Despite an $84 million overhaul completed in 2020, the 164-acre site is space-constrained.
The longer workday could help Mack’s Lehigh Valley Operations grow market share among heavy-duty truck OEMs. Mack delivered 7,960 trucks in the second quarter, 11% more than the 7,152 delivered in Q2 of 2022.
Its market share increased by one-tenth of a percentage point to 5.9% through May. That included medium-duty trucks built by nonunion workers in Roanoke, Virginia.
Mack is part of Volvo Group North America and a sibling of Volvo Truck North America.
‘Willingness to be creative’
“Our job security is dependent on our willingness to be creative in our joint partnership approach to address these concerns,” the 15-page highlight document posted on the Local 677 website said. “We will be working an 8½ hour paid day which includes a paid lunch. This will equate to an added approximately $3,000 per year.”
Voting on the local and master agreements covering about 3,900 UAW-represented workers is scheduled for Sunday.
Watch now: Will UAW get to organize Mack’s Roanoke, Virginia plant?
The tentative master agreement reached minutes before the last four-year agreement expired on Sunday addresses wages, health care and other broad-stroke issues. Eleven tentative local agreements were reached ahead of the master pact.
Those agreements primarily cover issues pertaining to a specific facility. In the case of Mack’s assembly plant in Lower Macungie, the pay progression, or grow-in, over six years will increase by 10% a year from the contract reached following a 12-day strike in October 2019. Production technicians in their sixth year would receive a $9.17-per-hour raise.
Editor’s note: Corrects date of ratification vote to Sunday from Saturday, adds master agreement details.
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Mack Trucks settles with UAW on longer agreement