Friend of the working man, Donald Trump, swept into Indianapolis on December 1, 2016
proclaiming before a packed house that he and he alone had saved 1,100 jobs at the local Carrier manufacturing plant. Too bad that it was a lie. Now the chickens have come home to roost and workers are angry and disillusioned to say the least, and the number of lost jobs is more than the initial 1,100, it’s up to 1,600.
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Trump made Carrier the poster child of the evils of offshoring during the presidential campaign when a video of Carrier workers being fired went viral, Specifically, in February 2016, Carrier informed more than 2,000 workers at two Indiana factories that they were going to be fired and that production would be shifted to a plant in Monterrey, Mexico. A few weeks after the election, Trump played working class hero, announcing that the jobs at the Indianapolis plant had all been saved. Unfortunately, Trump's story didn't hold water from the very beginning. When Trump announced the savings of all of the workers' jobs he inconveniently included 350 engineering and administrative employees, but they were never leaving Carrier to begin with. So Trump lied about saving their jobs. That left 550 workers who would still lose their jobs in Indianapolis as well as 738 workers at Huntington, which would shut down entirely.
Union vice-president Robert James is a forklift driver and one of the workers whose job was ostensibly saved and in fact was not. He wasn't the only one with dashed hopes subsequent to Trump's falsehood. He and USW Local 1999 President Chuck Jones had to tell the others. “We had to explain to workers that number was wrong. The workers were shocked that the number of jobs saved were lower than they thought. A lot said, ‘That’s fucked up.’”
Jones got himself in a lot of hot water when he dared to tell the truth to the media that Trump had “lied his ass off." That earned him Trump’s wrath, and threats pouring in like, “You better keep your eye on your kids” and “We’re coming for you.” Jones says, RawStory has more:
“It really pissed me off he misled people their jobs might be saved. He didn’t want to get up and tell people part of the plant is going to stay and part of the plant is going to Mexico,” Jones said.
At the Local 1999 hall, wolfing down a cheeseburger and fries for lunch as he conducts media interviews, Jones says he is “grateful for the 730 jobs Trump did save.” But he points out this was a one-off deal. Jones says because Carrier’s parent company, United Technologies, does $6.7 billion in federal business, mainly for the Pentagon, “Trump had a helluva bargaining chip with the military contracts.”
Jones and others attribute the move to “corporate greed.” He says, “It’s all about money. Carrier is a very profitable company. Because they can pay the Mexican workers $3 an hour to enhance their profitability, they will do it.” UT earned $7.6 billion in 2015, has squirreled away $29 billion offshore, and is buying back $16 billion in stock to boost its share price.
Union leaders haven’t seen any details of the deal between Trump and Carrier. Jones says, “We don’t know if we are even going to see a formal agreement, anything in writing. Do I trust them? Hell no.” He is also wary of Carrier’s plan for $16 million in investments that include automation. “Two years after they put the automation in, it makes it a lot easier to move the plant.”
James agrees, “I don’t trust Trump and I don’t trust Carrier. If you were going to take my job once, you’ll do it again. I feel Carrier is going to move the whole damn plant out in a few years.” He says the union probably won’t learn of the company’s plans until 2018, when the next contract comes up for negotiation.
In Jones’ estimation, “Trump used Carrier workers.” He says, “Very few of them who are losing their jobs are going to come out alright. Carrier’s average wage is $23 an hour. Rexnord’s is $25 an hour. There’s not a lot of jobs paying that out there. They’ll have to work two jobs—‘Would you like fries with that?’—for less money and no benefits.”
“Trump did a helluva masterful job telling working class people he would be their champion.” But rather than make America great again, says Jones, Trump is leading “a race to the bottom” with comments like “all workers, they make too much money.”
The crack about making too much money is even worse than it sounds at face value. Trump has said that "northern" workers make too much money, which has a clear racist tinge to it, adding insult to injury to the white working class male, the "forgotten man," whose restoration to a previous glory is the very essence of his "Make America Great Again," pitch. That pitch is not going over so well right now with Frank Staples, another Carrier employee whose job Trump had ostensibly saved, but really had not.
Frank Staples is one of those on the chopping block at Carrier. A 12-year company veteran, he says, “I was ecstatic about Trump’s announcement.” But when he realized he was among those losing their jobs, Staples says, “I felt disrespected by the company we poured our soul into. What they did is just downright shameful.”
As for Trump, Staples says, “My opinions haven’t changed. Trump is still a jackass. Trump says Northern workers make too much, move it down to the Southern states. I can’t trust him. I think he says a lot of shit because people want to hear it. They vote for whoever lies the best. I’ve always been a Bernie man. He’s for the working people.”
At age 37, Staples is uncertain about his future. “I really don’t know what’s going to come next. I have a high-school diploma. I’m not stupid; I’m smart. They say we have jobs. It’s $8-an-hour flip burger jobs.”
Staples biggest worry is losing healthcare coverage. “If they get ride of ACA, how am I going to pay my insurance, pay my meds. I’ve had my shoulder replaced. I’ve had three heart attacks.”
So did Carrier workers who voted for Trump and who subsequently got backstabbed by him vote against their own economic self interests? That's debatable. Some of them, like Lakita Clark and Terry Browning did in fact vote for Hillary.
Terry Browning, 55, who has worked at the Carrier plant in Huntington for 30 years, saw Clinton’s political experience as an asset. Other Clinton voters mustered “the lesser evil.”
Lakita Clark, 40, who’s put in 15 years at Carrier, says of Clinton, “I wasn’t big on Hillary, but I supported her. I am all for voting for a woman president, but I was rooting for Bernie. I liked him more than Hillary.”
In Clark’s view, her vote for Clinton was a vote against her self-interest. “If Hillary won, we would still be out of a job.” Clark also observes, with merit, that if Clinton “had Sanders for her vice president, she would have won.”
Clark’s enthusiasm for Sanders is common among Carrier and Rexnord workers. They seemed genuinely excited about Sanders, and the few who didn’t support him think he is sincere. Unabashed Trump supporters like Tim Mathis think Trump would have lost to Sanders. Jones, whose Steelworkers local endorsed Sanders in the primary, felt “Bernie coulda beat Trump. A lot of people who were turned off by Hillary and didn’t vote or voted third party would have rallied behind Bernie.”
To be fair, the belief Sanders would have won doesn’t consider how Trump could have pummeled him as “Commie Bernie.” But the outpouring for Sanders’ shows Democrats had a winning formula—appeal to the economic interests of all workers—but one rejected by the Clinton and Obama wing of the party that has dominated it for the last 25 years.
No use crying over spilt milk. Mayhaps, perchance it would have been different with Bernie and the simple fact is that we will never know. More important here is the fact that the working class, at least at the Carrier plant in Indianapolis, did believe Donald Trump's message, to their detriment and now to their collective chagrin. The manufacturing jobs are not coming back, any more than the coal mining jobs, no matter who is in the White House. Nobody "took" those jobs away, they went away through the process of attrition as the global economy metamorphized from what it was 30 years ago to what it is today.
The real crime here is that Trump took a very complex global economic issue and rather than explaining it factually and fairly ignored it flat out, and instead substituted a castles in the sky vision to the workers that they so desperately wanted to believe, and so they bought it. Then he showed up in Indianapolis and bragged about all that he had accomplished and now that pipe dream has gone up in smoke. All these people want is a chance to raise a family and own a home, the essence of the American dream. They won't get it with the non-union low paid jobs that are left in their region and they as sure as hell are not ever going to get it by listening to Donald Trump. That is the sad fact that workers are waking up to and we've only just begun this charade that will be known as "the Trump administration."
The entire piece on the disillusioned workers is worth a read:
More than 1,600 factory workers are being fired after Trump said he’d save their jobs — here’s what they have to say