Attacked by Trump and Ignored by Democrats: Chuck Jones on Labor’s Fight

2016 was a rough year for Chuck Jones. In Feb­ru­ary, the pres­i­dent of Indiana’s Unit­ed Steel­work­ers Local 1999 learned that 1,350 of his mem­bers were going to be laid off from the Indi­anapo­lis-based Car­ri­er plant. Car­ri­er was mov­ing its oper­a­tions to Mex­i­co in search of high­er prof­its, even though its par­ent com­pa­ny, Unit­ed Tech­nolo­gies, made $15 bil­lion in 2015. 

A video of the work­ers react­ing angri­ly to the news went viral, and both Bernie Sanders and Don­ald Trump used the event on the cam­paign trail to illus­trate the plight of U.S. work­ers and rail against the free-trade deals that both can­di­dates said were to blame for Carrier’s cav­a­lier outsourcing.

In Decem­ber 2016, Trump appeared to be mak­ing good when he announced he had saved 1,100 jobs at Car­ri­er. In fact, he had helped nego­ti­ate a $7 mil­lion incen­tives pack­age that con­vinced the com­pa­ny to keep about 800 of the 1,350 jobs in Indi­anapo­lis — leav­ing about 550 still head­ed for Mex­i­co. But Trump glossed over this in his pub­lic state­ments, while appar­ent­ly count­ing hun­dreds of engi­neer­ing jobs that were nev­er slat­ed to leave in his pub­lic tally.

This didn’t sit well with Jones. In an inter­view with the Wash­ing­ton Post, he said Trump had ​“lied his ass off.” In a CNN inter­view, Jones, who has the grav­el­ly voice of a smok­er and is miss­ing a near-front tooth, said about Trump, ​“You made a promise to keep all these jobs. You halfway delivered.”

It didn’t take long for Trump to hit back via his favorite medi­um of com­mu­ni­ca­tion: ​“Chuck Jones … has done a ter­ri­ble job rep­re­sent­ing work­ers. No won­der com­pa­nies flee coun­try!” Trump tweet­ed on Dec. 7, 2016.

Imme­di­ate­ly, Jones start­ed receiv­ing threats via e‑mail, social media and calls to the union local and his per­son­al cell phone. Jones told the Post that some callers made ref­er­ence to his chil­dren and asked the make of his car.

But Jones says he isn’t scared of Trump and his rabid Twit­ter fol­low­ers. In an inter­view with In These Times, he dis­cussed the effects of plant clo­sures on work­ing-class com­mu­ni­ties and what the Car­ri­er saga says about the future of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party.

You have the dis­tinct hon­or of being the first U.S. union leader to be attacked by the pres­i­dent-elect on Twit­ter. How does it feel? 

I didn’t expect it. The Post didn’t mis­quote me by any means — I said some pret­ty harsh things about Trump.

Right after­wards, I got a call from a friend: ​“Hey, Trump’s ham­mer­ing you on Twit­ter.” And I start­ed laugh­ing. But then my phone start­ed going wild.

Have things calmed down for you and the local? 

For the most part. We’re still get­ting a few calls and e‑mails and let­ters — you got your wack­os out there. But over­all, I would say we’ve actu­al­ly got­ten a very pos­i­tive response in sup­port of the posi­tion we took.

At one point, we had three sec­re­taries answer­ing the phone, and we were try­ing to keep a tal­ly. Even­tu­al­ly we start­ed los­ing track. I’d say 10-to‑1 pos­i­tive over­all, though. We got a few threats, but that’s to be expect­ed, I guess.

I’ve been doing this job for 30 years. So when he said I’m not good at my job — that doesn’t both­er me. I know what I’ve done in the labor move­ment for the last 30 years.

Does it wor­ry you that this could be the new nor­mal under Trump — any­one who chal­lenges him will get his Twit­ter hordes sicced on them? 

I was real­ly sur­prised that he react­ed the way he did. When Oba­ma was elect­ed, my God, all the stuff peo­ple were say­ing about him, but he didn’t react. But Trump does. He nev­er, ever said I was wrong on my num­bers. The only thing he want­ed to do was per­son­al­ly assault me.

Anybody’s got­ta be con­cerned about attacks. But if some­body feels like the pres­i­dent has said some­thing wrong, they ough­ta speak up. He’s prob­a­bly try­ing to pre­vent that from hap­pen­ing by attack­ing me.

How have your mem­bers react­ed to Trump’s inter­ven­tion at Car­ri­er? Do they buy his line that Mex­i­cans are ​“tak­ing our man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs”? 

When Trump and Pence came here in Decem­ber, they toured the plant and had a whole dog and pony show. Trump kept talk­ing about Car­ri­er ​“man­u­fac­tur­ing air con­di­tion­ers,” but we don’t make air con­di­tion­ers here — we make fur­naces. They watched peo­ple mak­ing fur­naces, then said, ​“These air con­di­tion­ers will remain here, and this plant will pro­duce more air con­di­tion­ers than it ever has in the past.” That was a bad sign.

Those who are get­ting their jobs saved are very grate­ful. There are oth­ers who said, ​“He’s a phony.”

Some peo­ple are blam­ing the Mex­i­can work­ers. And I’m say­ing, ​“Hey, it’s not Mex­i­can work­ers we’ve got an issue with. They’re being exploit­ed, too, they’re not mak­ing out on the deal. The cor­po­ra­tions are.”

Trade became a huge issue dur­ing the cam­paign, with Trump repeat­ed­ly attack­ing Clinton’s past sup­port for free­trade deals. Do you think this under­mined her sup­port among work­ers like those at Carrier? 

Peo­ple didn’t trust Clin­ton. She sup­port­ed NAF­TA; she was for the TransPa­cif­ic Part­ner­ship, but when she decid­ed to run for pres­i­dent and need­ed labor’s sup­port, she was against it. I vot­ed for Clin­ton because I thought she was the bet­ter of the two evils. But we heard very lit­tle from her.

We had invit­ed Hillary to our ral­ly at the state house. Through her peo­ple, she accept­ed. But then a cou­ple weeks lat­er, her peo­ple said she had a ​“sched­ul­ing con­flict.” The truth was, she wasn’t going to come to that ral­ly when we were talk­ing about jobs going to Mex­i­co because of NAF­TA. She prob­a­bly thought she would’ve been eat­en alive [at the ral­ly] — and she was right.

The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, and Hillary in par­tic­u­lar, didn’t speak about the work­ing class. They for­got about us. That trou­bled a lot of people.

Fol­low­ing Clinton’s loss, many are argu­ing that the more pop­ulist wing of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, rep­re­sent­ed by peo­ple like Bernie Sanders, Eliz­a­beth War­ren and Kei­th Elli­son, should take con­trol. What did your mem­bers think about Sanders? 

We sup­port­ed Bernie in the pri­ma­ry, then in the gen­er­al we stayed out of it. He spoke at our ral­ly at the state house and sup­port­ed our move­ment. He was quite vocal. His mes­sage in favor of work­ing peo­ple hasn’t changed in 20 years.

Trump picked that up and ran with it. And it res­onat­ed. He was talk­ing about Car­ri­er and a lot of oth­er com­pa­nies leav­ing the country.

Car­ri­er isn’t the only Indi­anapo­lis plant fac­ing out­sourc­ing. What’s going on with work­ers at Rexnord?

I’m actu­al­ly from that plant. I got a job there in 1969. They man­u­fac­ture bear­ings for agri­cul­tur­al heavy machin­ery and basi­cal­ly any­thing that’s got a shaft. They’re one of the fore­most bear­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers in this coun­try. They’re very prof­itable. But once again, cor­po­rate greed: Accord­ing to their fig­ures, they’re sav­ing $15.5 mil­lion a year by mov­ing to Mex­i­co. Car­ri­er is sav­ing $65 million.

It’s not that either of them couldn’t com­pete. Both were very prof­itable. We can com­pete on every lev­el, but we can’t com­pete with $3‑an-hour wages in Mexico.

So when peo­ple say, ​“These Steel­work­ers are so damn greedy” — no, these com­pa­nies are so damn greedy. There’s nev­er enough prof­its. They’re not real­ly car­ing what peo­ple are doing in their communities.

Why do you think that focus on trade and out­sourc­ing res­onat­ed so strongly? 

I’ve been through prob­a­bly eight to 10 plant clo­sures, and I know what it does to people’s fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties. The aver­age wage at Car­ri­er was $23 an hour, $25 at Rexnord [anoth­er Indi­anapo­lis plant where hun­dreds of work­ers are still slat­ed to lose their jobs]. These folks aren’t going to find jobs that will come any­where close to that. Some peo­ple will have to work two jobs at min­i­mum wage to make even half of that. And they’ll be say­ing, ​“Do you want fries with that?”

And pret­ty soon peo­ple run out of their unem­ploy­ment, so then they lose their car, then they lose their house, then they lose their spouse. Some­times they end up tak­ing their own lives. I’ve seen this among my own members.

In your esti­ma­tion, what needs to change? 

Bernie Sanders has intro­duced some leg­is­la­tion that says that if com­pa­nies like Car­ri­er, which have, say, mil­i­tary con­tracts, move over­seas, they would lose their con­tracts. And if they did move, there would be tar­iffs imposed on the goods brought back into the coun­try. The chance of this bill pass­ing is nil, because of the make­up of the peo­ple in Con­gress — they’re not going to let this bill go through.

But we’re still fight­ing the fight. If we can keep the lime­light on it, maybe we can gen­er­ate enough pres­sure to show the Amer­i­can peo­ple that this isn’t fair and it can’t continue.

I wish I could answer that one. I real­ly don’t know. A lot of times, polit­i­cal peo­ple, you get a feel for what their posi­tions are. For Trump, it depends on what day it is.