Trump rolls out red carpet for some unions more than others

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

President Donald Trump says labor unions have an open door to his White House, but so far, he’s holding the door a little more ajar for some organizations than others.

Trump has put out the welcome mat for the nation’s construction trades, with whom he’s had relationships during decades of building office towers and hotels. Also invited in have been auto, steel and coal workers who backed him during the 2016 election.

But there’s been no White House invitation for other unions representing the sprawling but shrinking pool of 14.6 million workers who collectively bargain with employers in the labor movement.

“You can tell Congress that America’s building trades and its president are very much united,” Trump told North America’s Building Trade Unions, even as he pledged in the same speech, “America’s labor leaders will always find an open door with Donald Trump.”

But he has not courted all union leaders or advocated for all labor priorities. For example, he’s against a $15-an-hour minimum wage and has let linger a rule expanding overtime pay. Much like President Ronald Reagan did, Trump is not so much pursuing a labor agenda but one that appeals to those who share his “Buy American, Hire American” priorities and happen to be union members.

“Trump is clearly working to be the blue-collar president,” said F. Vincent Vernuccio, director of labor policy at the center-right nonprofit Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Michigan.

The White House says the president is “open to meeting with various individuals and groups on how to improve the lives of all Americans.” But even among unions with most-favored status, there’s some skepticism about whether he’s for workers or just the executives who hire them.

Trump got boos and hisses during his address to the building trades union. And Chuck Jones, president of United Steelworkers Local 1999, with whom Trump feuded, raises an eyebrow at the talk coming from the White House.

“I don’t think from our perspective, he’s a friend of the working-class person,” Jones said, noting that Trump’s tax plan would benefit the president himself, and that Trump campaigned on “getting rid” of a long-standing free trade deal with Canada and Mexico. “Trump always had some kind of relationship with the building trades. But for regular manufacturing? This is not a good time for working people.”

During his first 100 days, Trump has tried to appeal to those frustrated by seeing U.S. jobs go overseas. For example, he scrapped U.S. plans to participate in an Asia-Pacific trade pact and belittled the North American Free Trade Agreement, although he backed away from a campaign pledge to withdraw from it.

But while some unions have received the red carpet treatment, others have been largely ignored at the White House.

Take teachers unions, traditional allies of Democrats. While Education Secretary Betsy DeVos joined Trump for White House sessions with teachers and other educators, neither of the two big teachers unions – the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers – was invited.

Trump is picking and choosing among labor unions at a vulnerable time for the movement in American politics. Union membership declined 240,000 in one year to 10.7 percent of the workforce in 2016, about half as much as when the Census Bureau began collecting such statistics in 1983.