For Release: Tuesday, January 10, 2006

UAW flag raised at Thomas Built Buses plant in High Point, N.C.

HIGH POINT, N.C. – UAW members and officials from Thomas Built Buses joined together today to raise the UAW flag over the company’s factory here.

“We’re proud to be a union plant, and proud to keep building top-quality buses for our customers,” said Niels Chapman, president of UAW Local 5287, which represents some 1,200 workers at the plant. “I’m going to really enjoy seeing that flag fly overhead when I come into work every day.”

Thomas Built Buses, the leading manufacturer of school buses in North America, is a division of Freightliner LLC, a unit of DaimlerChrysler.

A majority of TBB workers voted for union representation during an NLRB-supervised election in July, the latest in a string of UAW organizing victories at Freightliner-owned manufacturing, parts distribution and pre-delivery inspection delivery facilities. More than 8,000 workers at eight Freightliner facilities in North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee are now represented by the UAW.

“Top management at Freightliner and Thomas Built Buses made a commitment that workers would have a free choice about whether or not to be part of our union,” said Gary Casteel, director of UAW Region 8. “They have stood by their word 100 percent, and set a great example for other employers.

“Our experience – in the North, South and everywhere else – is that when there is a level playing field and workers have a free choice, a strong majority are in favor of becoming part of our union.”

The UAW and Thomas Built reached a first contract agreement in October. It includes lower monthly health care premiums, wage increases and lump-sum payments for workers.

The contract also provides for the UAW flag to fly over the High Point plant, and for UAW-TBB quality stickers to be put on all buses produced in the facility.

The UAW campaign at Freightliner is the largest recent successful organizing drive at any manufacturing company in the United States. Since Freightliner workers began organizing in 2003, the company has hired thousands of workers in its unionized facilities, and workers have received pay increases, lowered their health care costs and won improvements in working conditions.