Donald Trump attacks Carrier union leader, blames employees for being laid off

Donald Trump picked a fight with yet another person who stood up to him, and blamed the victims for being laid off

By Matthew Rozsa

Staff Writer

Published December 8, 2016 12:37PM (EST)

An employee enters the Carrier Corp. plant parking lot, Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2016, in Indianapolis. Carrier and President-elect Donald Trump reached an agreement to keep nearly 1,000 jobs in Indiana. Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence planned to travel to the state Thursday to unveil the agreement alongside company officials. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings) (AP)
An employee enters the Carrier Corp. plant parking lot, Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2016, in Indianapolis. Carrier and President-elect Donald Trump reached an agreement to keep nearly 1,000 jobs in Indiana. Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence planned to travel to the state Thursday to unveil the agreement alongside company officials. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings) (AP)

President-elect Donald Trump wasn't happy with Chuck Jones, the president of United Steelworkers 1999 who said Trump "lied his ass off" about the numbers saved in the Carrier deal. And so, he took to Twitter.

Although Trump claimed to have saved the jobs of "over 1,100 people," only about 800 jobs will be kept in Indiana. Around 550 are still going to be shipped overseas. In return for this, Carrier will receive tax breaks of $700,000 a year and expects to benefit from impending tax reductions and corporate deregulations.

In short, Jones did not feel this was the type of wonderful pro-worker deal that Trump was making it out to be. So how did he react to being the target of his very own Trumper tantrum?

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

Jones later added, “He needs to worry about getting his Cabinet filled and leave me the hell alone.”

Then, things got worse. The Post reports:

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.

Jones, who said he was working for 30 years, told the Post that he's ready to "move on" from the "people that make stupid statements."

The president of the Indiana State AFL-CIO, Brett Voorhies, could not contain his righteous disgust at Trump's appalling behavior toward Jones.

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


By Matthew Rozsa

Matthew Rozsa is a staff writer at Salon. He received a Master's Degree in History from Rutgers-Newark in 2012 and was awarded a science journalism fellowship from the Metcalf Institute in 2022.

MORE FROM Matthew Rozsa


Related Topics ------------------------------------------

Carrier Donald Trump