Is Trump Going After Collective Bargaining Rights?
Chuck Jones, president of the United Steelworkers 1999 union (Image: CNN Screengrab)
Via The Washington Post:
President-elect Donald Trump’s Twitter attack this week on a union official, followed by his choice of a labor secretary who has criticized new worker protections, has rattled leaders of the American labor movement, who fear unions may be facing their gravest crisis in decades.
On Thursday, Trump announced that he would nominate as his labor secretary Andrew Puzder, a fast-food executive who has opposed additional overtime pay for workers and expressed skepticism about increasing the minimum wage. That followed a pair of Twitter messages Wednesday evening (below) in which Trump attacked Chuck Jones, president of the United Steelworkers 1999 union that represents Carrier workers, who had criticized him, saying the official had done a “terrible job representing workers.”
The actions, coming just four weeks after Trump won the presidency in part by wooing union voters with promises of better trade deals and a manufacturing revival, fed fears among national labor leaders that Trump was now planning a broad assault on unions.
“The president-elect campaigned on reaching out to working people, and this is one of a string of nominations that run counter to that,” said Eric Hauser, the AFL-CIO’s strategic adviser and communications director.
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