Less than one year after President Donald Trump bragged about convincing Carrier Corp. to refrain from laying off its workers, the manufacturer is now planning on terminating more than 200 jobs in January.
Carrier has announced that it expects to lay off 215 workers in January, according to Indy Star. They are delaying the layoffs by 20 days — pushing the date back to Jan. 11 from Dec. 22 — and reducing its estimate by 60 workers, since they had originally anticipated laying off 275 people.
Nevertheless, if Carrier goes through with its current plan, their total number of layoffs will reach 553 for 2017. The company has made this decision because it is moving its fan coil production to Monterrey, Mexico.
The most recent set of layoffs are part of a larger trend that Carrier has established throughout the year. In July — exactly six months after Trump's inauguration — Carrier eliminated 338 jobs at its Indianapolis furnace. This was done as part of a deal struck with the Trump administration to avoid much larger job cuts at the Carrier manufacturing plant.
Although Trump publicly bragged in December about striking a deal with Carrier to save workers' jobs, there were always indications that he was at best exaggerating his actual accomplishment. Even though Trump claimed he had saved the jobs of "over 1,100 people," United Steelworkers Local 1999 President Chuck Jones said at the time that the number was much more modest. More specifically, Jones claimed that Carrier had told him they would only save 730 union production jobs, meaning roughly 550 of the members of his union would still have their positions sent overseas.
Jones later said, "For whatever reason, he lied his ass off." He added, "Trump and Pence, they pulled a dog and pony show on the numbers. I almost threw up in my mouth."
Not surprisingly, Trump took to Twitter to attack Jones at the time.
If nothing else, Carrier's decision to lay off the same number of employees that Jones said they would has vindicated the union leader.
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