AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka quit President Trump’s manufacturing council “effective immediately” Tuesday evening, soon after the president blamed “both sides” for the weekend violence in Charlottesville, Va. The leader of the nation’s largest labor federation condemned Trump’s response, saying he was condoning racial bigotry.
“We cannot sit on a council for a president who tolerates bigotry and domestic terrorism. President Trump’s remarks today repudiate his forced remarks yesterday about the KKK and neo-Nazis. We must resign on behalf of America’s working people, who reject all notions of legitimacy of these bigoted groups,” Trumka tweeted. Thea Lee, formerly the AFL-CIO’s deputy chief of staff and now an economist working with the organization, also resigned from the council, the labor federation said.
“It’s clear that President Trump’s Manufacturing Council was never an effective means for delivering real policy that lifts working families and his remarks today were the last straw. We joined this council with the intent to be a voice for working people and real hope that it would result in positive economic policy, but it has become yet another broken promise on the president’s record. From hollow councils to bad policy and embracing bigotry, the actions of this administration have are consistently failed working people.”
He is one of several business leaders who have quit the council after Trump’s various remarks about the violence, in which one woman was killed after a car drove into a crowd of people protesting the alt-right rally being held in Charlottesville Saturday. Kenneth Frazier, CEO of the pharmaceutical company Merck & Co., Kevin Plank, CEO of the athletic wear company Under Armour, and Brian Krzanich, CEO of Intel, have resigned from the council since Saturday, as did Scott Paul, the president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing.
Trumka had been under pressure from liberal groups to quit the council. He initially held off doing so and instead downplayed the council’s importance, telling Politico that it “has yet to hold any real meeting,” and “there are real questions” about whether it would accomplish anything meaningful.
That changed after Trump’s comments Tuesday in which the president argued that liberal activists protesting the neo-Nazi groups shared the blame for Saturday’s violence. “I think there is blame on both sides and I have no doubt about it and you don’t have any doubt about it, either. What about the alt-left that came charging at, as you say, at the alt-right? Do they have any assemblage of guilt?”
Trumka was one of Trump’s most vocal critics during the 2016 election, repeatedly calling his immigration rhetoric “hateful and racist.” After the election Trumka took a more conciliatory stance, meeting privately with the president and offering qualified praise for some administration goals. “We are ready to work with the Trump admin consistent with our values – and we will never back down from our values. #Inauguration,” Trumka tweeted in January. The labor leader praised Trump’s call for limiting high-tech H-1B visas. “This was the first time the president has talked about legal immigration being used to drive down [domestic workers’] wages. We’ve been saying that for a long time,” Trumka said in response to a March speech by Trump.
At other times, Trumka remained critical. In an April speech at the National Press Club, he accused Trump of pulling “the old switcheroozy” regarding the issues he campaigned on. “If you pull a bait-and-switch on working people, if you say that you’re with us and then attack us, you’re going to fail,” he said.
