Donald Trump made 30,573 false or misleading statements during his first term, according to The Washington Post.
One of the biggest Trump whoppers is his continuing claim that he’s pro-labor.
Three senior-citizen Kentucky union activists beg to differ, and in no uncertain terms.
“He’s been anti-union all his life,” said Jerry Sykes of Marshall County, an 82-year-old United Auto Workers retiree and member of Four Rivers Indivisible, a western Kentucky branch of the national group.
“Look at all those federal construction projects he’s cancelled,” said 73-year-old Kirk Gillenwaters, a Bullitt countian, UAW retiree, and president of the Kentucky branch of the Alliance for Retired Americans. “They were union projects — almost every trade.”
Trump’s policies are “a total repudiation of those who say he is union-friendly,” said Bill Londrigan, 69, president emeritus of the Kentucky State AFL-CIO who lives in Waddy, near Frankfort. “Public sector or private sector, it doesn’t matter to Donald Trump.”
Unions have taken Trump to court over his mass firings of federal employees and stripping away their collective bargaining rights, the latter a move AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler called “the single biggest act of union-busting in history.”
Trump is banking on the 6-3 majority, rightwing, anti-union Supreme Court to ultimately rule in his favor.
Meanwhile, Trump’s cancellation of federal construction projects nationwide has wiped out tens of thousands of private sector union jobs, mostly in the building and construction trades. “Real jobs and real paychecks are in jeopardy from these devastating blows to American workers and their families,” said a statement from Sean McGarvey, president of North America’s Building Trades Unions.
Londrigan, an Elevator Constructors union retiree, said he knew Trump wouldn’t limit his attack on organized labor to government employee unions. “They were, in a sense, low hanging fruit because they were employed by the government directly. But as you can see with the cancellation of federal construction projects, private sector union members can be reached very easily, too.”
Local, state and federal construction projects employ millions of workers – many, if not most, union members.
Gillenwaters said Trump’s demolition of the White House’s East Wing to make way for his massive ballroom is symbolic of the administration’s plan to wipe out the whole union movement: “The company he hired to tear it down is non-union.”
Jabbed a Facebook post from the Laborers International Union of North America:
“Nonunion Laborers tearing up the #WhiteHouse #EastWing for a $200M ballroom while REAL workers are LOCKED OUT, waiting on a paycheck. ‘Workers first’? Don’t make us laugh.”
Exit polls show that most union workers voted against Trump all three times he ran for president. (Union members helped build last Tuesday’s “Blue Tsunami,” too.) But a significant minority has supported Trump despite his well-documented anti-union record. “Take notice — that’s my word to them,” Gillenwaters said.
“A lot of our union brothers voted for Trump,” said Sykes. “But now I’m thinking that if they pay attention and see what’s going on in the country right now, they’re going to change their minds in the future.
“No union in this country is safe from Donald Trump.”
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