Republican front-runner Donald Trump took a rare step into less adoring political territory on Wednesday, attending a meeting with the Teamsters union as his campaign hopes expanding support with workers will boost the former president in key electoral battlegrounds such as Michigan and Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
But the overture captured the challenge he faces in convincing voters to look past his own record as a businessman, when he said he preferred nonunion labor, and as president, when his appointees to the National Labor Relations Board consistently sided with management. Trump\u2019s attendance on Wednesday \u2014 in response to an invitation that the Teamsters extended to all presidential candidates \u2014 drew backlash from some union members. One executive board member refused to attend and called Trump a \u201cknown union buster, scab and insurrectionist.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re wrong about that,\u201d Trump responded in a news conference after the meeting, saying that he has completed some projects with union labor and others without them. \u201cWe have a good shot, I think,\u201d he added of the possibility of a Teamsters endorsement. \u201cThey never had a better four years than they had during the Trump administration.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s sanguine account of the meeting was undercut in remarks that immediately followed from Teamsters president Sean O\u2019Brien, who praised President Biden even as he left open the question of an endorsement to be decided by members later in the year. O\u2019Brien said the meeting did not include any concessions, commitments or surprising answers from Trump. He was joined by two members who identified their top priority as opposing \u201cright-to-work\u201d laws, putting them at odds with Trump\u2019s support of laws that allow employees in a unionized workplace to opt out of financially supporting the union.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no question the Biden administration has been great for unions,\u201d O\u2019Brien said. \u201cThey all say they\u2019re pro-worker or they say they\u2019re going to support workers \u2026 We still have some more questions that need to be asked to both candidates.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump has criticized union leaders for consistently endorsing Democrats, claiming they do so against the wishes of rank-and-file members who are more sympathetic to him. Biden won 57 percent of union households in 2020, versus 40 percent for Trump, an improvement over Hillary Clinton\u2019s eight-point advantage in 2016, according to exit polls by Edison Research.<\/p>\n
Biden, who is headed to Michigan on Thursday, where he is expected to meet with union workers, has received a stream of earlier than typical union endorsements this election cycle, including a much sought-after seal of approval last week from the United Auto Workers. The AFL-CIO, the nation\u2019s largest labor federation, endorsed him in June. But a handful of influential unions, including the Teamsters, the American Postal Workers Union and the International Association of Fire Fighters, have continued to wield their endorsements as leverage in Washington.<\/p>\n
\u201cDonald Trump pretends to be pro-worker, then sides with management and does nothing while factories close and jobs are lost,\u201d Biden campaign spokesman Ammar Moussa said. \u201cTrump\u2019s long record of attacking unions and shipping jobs overseas while lining the pockets of his rich buddies speaks for itself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump reacted angrily to last week\u2019s UAW endorsement of Biden, which counts tens of thousands of members in key swing states. During last year\u2019s strike against the Big Three Detroit automakers, Trump threatened that supporting Biden would bring the union\u2019s own destruction. The 46-day strike resulted in wage raises of at least 25 percent.<\/p>\n
\u201cRarely, as a union, do you get so clear of a choice between two candidates,\u201d UAW president Shawn Fain said last week at the union\u2019s annual legislative conference. \u201cDonald Trump is a scab. Donald Trump is a billionaire, and that\u2019s who he represents.\u201d<\/p>\n
In media appearances announcing the endorsement, Fain addressed the tension that Trump is trying to stoke in his ranks, maintaining that most UAW members would support Biden. (In an interview on Fox News, he said \u201ca great majority\u201d would not support Biden. A UAW official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said Fain said the wrong name, and the union\u2019s internal polling shows majority support for Biden over Trump.)<\/p>\n
Biden has long courted union workers and often reminisces about the crucial union support he won in his first Senate race in 1972. Labor allies have applauded the president\u2019s legislative agenda for incentivizing companies to hire union workers and his public support for workers who seek to join unions.<\/p>\n
Trump responded to the UAW endorsement by lashing out at Fain on social media. On Wednesday he criticized the Biden administration\u2019s incentives for electric cars, baselessly suggesting that \u201call\u201d disabled vehicles on the side of the road amid subzero temperatures during the Iowa caucuses earlier this month were electric.<\/p>\n
Trump tried to change the dynamic with Wednesday\u2019s visit to the Teamsters. \u201cIt\u2019s a win just being here,\u201d said an adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he wasn\u2019t authorized to speak publicly.<\/p>\n
Trump has called himself \u201cpro-worker,\u201d positioning himself as an ally of the working class, but he has supported numerous policies that constricted labor\u2019s power. He installed a leader at the National Labor Relations Board, widely opposed by unions, whose policies and rulings weakened workers\u2019 rights. Trump\u2019s visit to Michigan during the UAW strike this fall featured a rally with autoworkers at a nonunion shop, while Biden joined striking workers on a picket line, becoming the first sitting president to do so. Trump has received few union endorsements outside of law enforcement unions.<\/p>\n
In the private sector, Trump\u2019s companies have objected to union drives in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, leading to allegations of violating union rights and not recognizing union contracts. In 1999 Trump settled a lawsuit over hiring nonunion demolition workers to demolish the site for Trump Tower and withholding benefit payments and interest amounting to $4 million.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a complete betrayal of union principles,\u201d said Jess Lister, a UPS employee and Teamsters union steward in Griffin, Ga. \u201cWhen we talk about being a union, we talk about representing and advocating for the most oppressed group. That is exactly the opposite of everything Donald Trump stands for.\u201d<\/p>\n
Teamsters president O\u2019Brien said Biden has committed to a meeting with the union but not yet set a date. He said Trump\u2019s sole remaining rival for the Republican nomination, Nikki Haley, has not responded to his invitation.<\/p>\n
After Trump\u2019s meeting on Wednesday he sought to tie his support among workers to one of his signature campaign issues \u2014 immigration and border security \u2014 at a time when he is discouraging Republicans from reaching a bipartisan deal on new enforcement authorities.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe unions and the Teamsters, if they don\u2019t have it closed down, they\u2019re not going to exist,\u201d Trump said of the border.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Brien, speaking afterward, distanced himself from Trump\u2019s position and cast doubt on Trump\u2019s frequent and unsubstantiated attacks on people crossing the border as coming from prisons and \u201cinsane asylums.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are all products of immigration, and the Teamsters union supports immigrant workers,\u201d O\u2019Brien said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Republican front-runner Donald Trump took a rare step into less adoring political territory on Wednesday, attending a meeting with the Teamsters union as his campaign hopes expanding support with workers will boost the former president in key electoral battlegrounds such as Michigan and Pennsylvania. But the overture captured the challenge he faces in convincing voters […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":420,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}