Organized labor has started a stepped-up campaign against Donald Trump, hoping to dent the Republican presidential candidate’s appeal with blue-collar voters, a concern for many on the Left.
The campaign is trying to turn Trump’s complicated relations with unions as a businessman against him.
“Donald Trump talks a lot about union members and our families, but his actions don’t match his rhetoric,” said the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation, in a new direct mail missive to union members mailed out Wednesday. The mailer takes Trump to task for supporting right-to-work laws and outsourcing work to foreign countries in his business dealings.
Trump’s campaign has rejected more conventional GOP economic rhetoric about free markets and opportunity in favor of a blue-collar, protectionist appeal directed at middle- and lower-income workers. It is similar to the rhetoric Hillary Clinton and the Democrats are using in this election cycle. That has presented a challenge for unions, which are backing Clinton, to keep their rank and file in line.
“Donald Trump has made it a point to claim the support of union members. He’s made a lot of fabricated assertions on the campaign trail and this is no different,” AFL-CIO spokesman Josh Goldstein said. The federation has pushed several similar efforts. A press release Tuesday quoted numerous rank and file union members disparaging Trump.
The union leaders are focusing their anti-Trump effort in battleground states with strong union presences. “We’ll be focusing on Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Ohio,” a union election strategist, speaking anonymously, told the Washington Examiner. The activist said about 40 unions were involved in the effort, including the Communication Workers of America, the United Steel Workers, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association.
The front-running Republican candidate has a long, complicated relationship with organized labor, having dealt extensively with unions as a real estate developer and as an owner of hotels and casinos. The service employees union Unite Here represents the workers at New Jersey’s Trump Taj Mahal, for example. Trump himself is a union man, having joined the Screen Actors Guild through his numerous film and TV appearances.
He at times has praised unions as a force for good. In his 2000 book The America We Deserve, he wrote, “Is Trump a union man? Let me tell you this: Unions still have a place in American society. In fact, with the globalization craze in full heat, unions are about the only force reminding us to remember the American family.”
CWA President Chris Shelton told Politico last year that there was some support for Trump among his union’s 600,000 members. “If our members come out with Donald Trump, then we’re going to endorse Donald Trump,” he said. CWA subsequently endorsed Clinton’s rival for the Democratic nod, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, before switching to her earlier this week.
However, Trump has clashed repeatedly with unions and is fighting an effort by Unite Here to organize the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas. His lawyers have argued the union was intimidating workers during their vote on whether to join it.
The GOP candidate told a South Carolina radio station in February that he prefers right-to-work states, such as the Palmetto State. “It is better for the people. You are not paying the big fees to the unions …. I like it because it gives great flexibility to the people. It gives great flexibility to the companies,” he said. Right to work laws prohibit workers from being forced to join or otherwise support a union as a condition of employment. Union leaders despise the laws, which are associated with membership losses and depleted treasuries.
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers released a study last week saying that Trump deals with unions only when he has to. “A review of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s projects reveals that he hires union when project labor agreements or dominant market share force him to. But more than 60 percent of his projects developed outside New York City and Atlantic City — which includes most of his recent projects — were built nonunion. When you exclude developments with project labor agreements, that jumps to nearly 80 percent built nonunion,” the report said. Project labor agreements are federal contracts that require the use of unionized workforces.
The unions are nevertheless being careful in their attacks on Trump. Wednesday’s direct mail effort, for example, avoids the issue of immigration even though the AFL-CIO and Clinton agree on a pro-immigrant policy and Trump is vehemently opposed. Immigration is a delicate issue for the federation since several of its member unions oppose expanding immigrant worker visa programs. Nor does it mention Clinton’s opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline project, which many labor and building trades unions supported. It praises Clinton for supporting a minimum wage increase but doesn’t note Trump’s recent comments indicating he would back an increase as well. Trump had previously opposed an increase.
In a conference call with reporters last week, Roger Hickey, co-director of the pro-labor activist group Campaign for America’s Future, warned that congressional Democrats had to take a stronger stance against the Obama administration’s proposed 12-nation trade deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Trump has railed against TPP, arguing that it would cost American manufacturing jobs. It is the same argument labor has made against the pact.
“Without that declaration [opposing the deal] … it will allow Donald Trump to continue to say that Democrats are not serious about opposing TPP,” Hickey said.
Washington Examiner reporter Gabby Morrongiello contributed to this report.
