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  1. #1
    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
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    Donald Trump just insulted a union leader on Twitter. Then the phone started to ring.

    Donald Trump just insulted a union leader on Twitter. Then the phone started to ring.

    By Danielle Paquette December 7 at 10:15 PM

    President-elect Donald Trump speaks at the Carrier plant in Indianapolis. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

    Chuck Jones uses a flip phone, so he didn’t see the tweet. His friend of 36 years called him Wednesday night and said: The president-elect is smearing you on Twitter.

    Jones, a union leader in Indianapolis, represents the Carrier workers whose jobs Donald Trump has pledged to save. He said the sudden attention from the country’s next leader didn’t feel real.

    “My first thought was, ‘Well, that’s not very nice,’ ” he told The Washington Post on Wednesday night. “Then, 'Well, I might not sleep much tonight.' "

    Jones, president of the United Steelworkers Local 1999, told The Post on Tuesday that he believed Trump had lied to the Carrier workers last week when he visited the Indianapolis plant. On a makeshift stage in a conference room, Trump had applauded United Technologies, Carrier’s parent company, for cutting a deal with him and agreeing to keep 1,100 jobs that were slated to move to Mexico in America’s heartland.

    Jones said Trump got that figure wrong.

    Carrier, he said, had agreed to preserve 800 production jobs in Indiana. (Carrier confirmed that number.) The union leader said Trump appeared to be taking credit for rescuing 350 engineering positions that were never scheduled to leave. Five hundred and fifty of his members, he said, were still losing their jobs. And the company was still collecting millions of dollars in tax breaks.

    In return for downsizing its move south of the border, United Technologies would receive $7 million in tax credits from Indiana, to be paid in $700,000 installments each year for 10. Carrier, on top of that, has agreed to invest $16 million in its Indiana operation. United Technologies, meanwhile, still plans to shuttle 700 factory jobs from Huntington, Ind., to Monterrey, Mexico.

    Jones, who said the union wasn't involved in the negotiations, said he's working to lift his members' spirits. He said he didn't have time to worry about Trump.

    “He needs to worry about getting his Cabinet filled,” he said, “and leave me the hell alone.”

    Representatives for Trump did not respond to The Post's requests for comment.

    Over the past two decades, the United States has lost about 4.5 million manufacturing jobs, a consequence economists ascribe to trade and automation. Jones said he has fought to keep work on U.S. soil, bargaining repeatedly with Carrier and Rexnord, another Indianapolis plant that plans to relocate jobs to Mexico.

    Vice President-elect Mike Pence tweeted his support for Jones earlier this year:

    Half an hour after Trump tweeted about Jones on Wednesday, the union leader's phone began to ring and kept ringing, he said. One voice asked: What kind of car do you drive? Another said: We’re coming for you.

    He wasn’t sure how these people found his number.

    “Nothing that says they’re gonna kill me, but, you know, you better keep your eye on your kids,” Jones said later on MSNBC. “We know what car you drive. Things along those lines.”

    “I’ve been doing this job for 30 years, and I’ve heard everything from people who want to burn my house down or shoot me,” he added. “So I take it with a grain of salt and I don’t put a lot of faith in that, and I’m not concerned about it and I’m not getting anybody involved. I can deal with people that make stupid statements and move on.”

    Brett Voorhies, president of the Indiana State AFL-CIO, called Jones after Trump’s tweet caught his eye. Jones, he said, had just left his office in Indianapolis, where he manages the needs of about 3,000 union members.

    “This guy makes pennies for what he does,” Voorhies said. “What he has to put up with is just crazy. Now he’s just got the president-elect smearing him on Twitter.”

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.e7c42e6bdbeb
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    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
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    “This guy makes pennies for what he does,” Voorhies said. “What he has to put up with is just crazy. Now he’s just got the president-elect smearing him on Twitter.”
    That's because you were smearing the president-elect on Twitter.
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    I don't know what this is all about, but I can't believe the union even exists still.

    I am not a union fan, but I do know that years ago, union workers paid taxes, supported their communities, schools, churches, fought the wars.
    They were responsible for a blue collar middle class.

    They sold out their workers. If they had been doing what they were being paid to do, we would have had a much different discussion and outcome on outsourcing and illegal immigration.

    Again, I am in no way a fan of the union, not good. In fact, I'm worse than 'not a fan', just didn't know how to put it. The news media, though, pretends it was the unreal demands of the union that caused jobs to go overseas. It didn't look that way to me when it was happening.
    Last edited by nntrixie; 12-08-2016 at 05:00 PM.

  4. #4
    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
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    I totally support the unions, but I also support right to work laws. You should have the choice and your job shouldn't depend on one or the other. I also totally support businesses and industries who want to operate non-union. I've not been a fan of choosing sides in a fight that wasn't my business or my job. However they work it out, vote the union in, vote them out, have mixed union and non-union employees, it all works for me right up to the point where the company leaves the country. Then, at that point, I make it my business, because these are our companies, the bedrock of our entire economy, and we're all dead rotting meat without them.

    Sometimes I think people forget that.
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    The fact is, I'll admit I don't support the union - really. I do see the people who were making the union wages were supporting this country. l I also do understand that many labor laws would not be in place were it not for the union.

    I agree right to work and right to be in a union. No one forced to do either.

    But I've seen too much to really be supportive of the union, and if the union had been working for Americans, they would have been, and still would be in Washington in droves trying to keep them from sending jobs overseas and bringing in illegals.

  6. #6
    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
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    The unions got corrupt. My Dad was a Boilermaker. Very hard, very dangerous work. One day he decided he would actually drive the 3.5 hours to attend a big union meeting. There was talk of a strike for a wage increase and he wasn't so sure it was the right thing at the right time, so he decided to participate and listen to what the union bosses had to say. Boilermakers were making really good wages at that time compared to the rest of the population and while they earned every dime, to Dad it seemed enough because the companies were offering some additional contribution to health insurance versus a wage increase, and not worth the loss of wages for what was going to be a very long strike against some very big industries including electric companies.

    It was the only union meeting he attended that I know of. He came back totally disgusted. There was no serious discussion, the bosses had liquor and got everybody drunk as skunks, the bosses shouted the propaganda from the stage and they voted for the strike. Everyone was out of work for 8 months for a 10 cent an hour a year increase over 3 years. A lot of goodwill with the customers was ruined because of the hardship the strike had put them in and to Dad it was totally the wrong thing to do. And of course the union raised the dues in return for the wage increase the strike got them to replenish the strike fund that had been emptied by the strike and I'm sure give themselves a big raise.
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  7. #7
    MW
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    Quote Originally Posted by Judy View Post
    That's because you were smearing the president-elect on Twitter.
    Some might consider it "smearing" and others may consider it a correction of facts. Isn't it possible Trump's staff misinformed him on the numbers? They've been pretty busy lately. I suspect the union boss knows more about the situation than Trump or his staff. Not taking sides here because I could care less either way. just playing the devils advocate for discussion sake.

    "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" ** Edmund Burke**

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  8. #8
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    The Unions are a scam and big money making businesses, they need to be terminated. They have caused many companies to leave and have no purpose anymore...time to end this worthless mafia...just like the UN.
    ILLEGAL ALIENS HAVE "BROKEN" OUR IMMIGRATION SYSTEM

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  9. #9
    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
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    Well, Trump sure made it clear that the union hadn't done it's job for the workers to save their jobs and should therefore reduce the dues.
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  10. #10
    Senior Member MontereySherry's Avatar
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    OK, since we get a nice big retirement check every month from my husbands union I guess I better speak up. It was fun when I first married my husband. I hated unions and he was a union man, so I have had years of debating the pros and cons of unions.

    First there is a big difference between private and public unions. With private unions the benefits, health and retirement, do not come from taxpayers unlike public unions.

    The big problem with unions is that the union big wigs have gotten to involved with politics. They spend a fortune lobbying for Democrats. Every election cycle, we get literature from the union telling us who they support and who we should vote for. Everyone we know who belong to private unions voted for Trump. They no longer listen to their business reps. They are so out of touch with their union members. But like all liberals and Democrats they are in panic mode and his attack on Trump is par for the course.

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