Category: Jobs

Trump Accuses NBC of “Fake News” For Questioning His Job-Creation Claims

President-elect Donald Trump says NBC News was “totally biased” and producing “more fake news” in a report it published Tuesday that pointed out that many companies are pre-emptively, or in many cases retroactively, announcing job-creation plans to avoid being targeted by a man set to become president Friday.

His tweets aren’t well-founded.

The NBC News report spotlighted instances in which companies themselves announced large-scale additions of jobs without mentioning Trump as a reason for their increased investments in the U.S., despite Trump’s having taken credit.

That list includes Amazon.com Inc., with its press release last week promising 100,000 new U.S. jobs, as well as the automobile makers Fiat Chrysler and General Motors . Often the corporate plans had been in the works long before Trump’s election on Nov. 8 or were among annual expansion goals that had been on the companies’ road maps for years.

MarketWatch, similarly, reported last week that Alibaba Group Holding’s claim, after a meeting at Trump Tower between CEO Jack Ma and the president-elect, that it will create a million U.S. jobs, doesn’t include full-time jobs or actual Alibaba jobs at all. MarketWatch also pointed out that Sprint Corp.’s decision to bring 5,000 jobs back to the U.S. from other countries, a move for which Trump took credit, were actually related to a previously announced commitment by Japan’s SoftBank Group to invest $50 billion in the U.S. as part of the global technology fund it announced with a Saudi sovereign-wealth fund in October. IBM Corp., which pre-emptively announced a 25,000-jobs growth plan in mid-December before ever meeting with Trump, falls into this category, as well.

The president-elect went as far, in a separate tweet, as to quote a Wall Street Journal story about Bayer AG’s pledge to invest and add jobs in the U.S. However, as CNN Money pointed out, those jobs aren’t directly tied back to Trump either, but to Bayer’s move to buy Monsanto, announced in September. When Bayer announced the Monsanto deal, it said St. Louis would remain the North American headquarters of Monsanto while San Francisco would serve as the base for their combined farming assets.

A look at a few of the press releases and CEO interviews cited by Trump and NBC News as well reveals varying levels of Trump involvement, from no linkage at all to a direct and causal connection.

On Tuesday, General Motors announced that it would invest an additional $1 billion in U.S. manufacturing and create 7,000 jobs, while moving some axle-producing jobs to the U.S. from Mexico. GM made no mention of the incoming administration or its policy priorities and instead said these latest steps follow similar investments it has made annually since 2009 — a period beginning shortly after the U.S. auto industry bailout. “GM’s announcement is part of the company’s increased focus on overall efficiency over the last four years,” the company said in a statement.

The GM investment commitment, in fact, is nearly $2 billion smaller than the investment in U.S. manufacturing that GM said it announced last year.

And the vast majority of GM’s investment will go to fund new vehicles and advanced technologies, as the company continues to invest in the resources to respond to increased competition from Silicon Valley amid the advent of autonomous-vehicle technology.

Fiat Chrysler, meanwhile, said its plan for a new $1 billion investment in the U.S. and the creation of 2,000 jobs is “a continuation of the efforts already underway to increase production capacity in the U.S. on trucks and SUVs to match demand.” As gasoline prices have tumbled, demand for gas-guzzling trucks and sport-utility vehicles has rebounded, a theme that predates Trump’s election.

Walmart’s press release Tuesday announcing 10,000 new U.S. jobs also excluded any Trump mention and was more tied to the company’s longer-term strategy to expand its retail locations globally and improve its e-commerce services to better compete with the likes of Amazon.

Amazon, for its part, has said it is adding tens of thousands of jobs to staff new but previously announced fulfillment centers in Texas, California, Florida and New Jersey.

Other job announcements, though, were more directly linked to Trump, at least in the sense that they were reacting to him, which was part of the point NBC News was trying to make.

Ford Motor Co. F, -0.40% told reporters in so many words that its decision to cancel plans for a new plant in Mexico and create 700 jobs in Michigan were related to Trump’s pro-business policies.

Lockheed Martin Corp.’s LMT, -0.08% decision to add 1,800 positions and lower the cost of its F-35 program arose following a meeting at Trump Tower. It also followed Trump public statements blasting the company over its prices.

(h/t Market Watch)

Trump Threatens German Carmaker Buyers with 35 Percent U.S. Import Tax

U.S President-elect Donald Trump warned German car companies he would impose a border tax of 35 percent on vehicles imported to the U.S. market, a plan that drew sharp rebukes from Berlin and hit the automakers’ shares.

In an interview with German newspaper Bild, published on Monday, Trump criticized German carmakers such as BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen for failing to produce more cars on U.S. soil.

“If you want to build cars in the world, then I wish you all the best. You can build cars for the United States, but for every car that comes to the USA, you will pay 35 percent tax,” Trump said in remarks translated into German.

“I would tell BMW that if you are building a factory in Mexico and plan to sell cars to the USA, without a 35 percent tax, then you can forget that,” Trump said.

Volkswagen (VW) shares closed down 2.2 percent, while BMW and Daimler’s shares ended 1.5 percent lower.

Under pressure to deliver on campaign promises to revive U.S. industrial jobs, Trump has turned his fire on carmakers that use low-cost Mexican plants to serve the U.S. market. He has also warned Japan’s Toyota it could be subject to a “big border tax” if it builds its Corolla cars for the U.S. market at a planned factory in Mexico.

All three German carmakers have invested heavily in Mexico, but also pointed out on Monday that they manufacturer in the United States as well.

BMW executive Peter Schwarzenbauer told reporters the company was sticking to plans to invest around $1 billion in a new plant in Mexico, which is due to go into production in 2019 and create at least 1,500 jobs.

SERIOUS WARNING

“The president’s powers are considerable. He can legally impose tariffs of up to 15 percent for 150 days. Trump is not constrained by Congress,” said Simon Evenett, professor of international trade at Switzerland’s University of St Gallen.

“Even if foreign companies object and seek to challenge the legality of tariffs, it will take at least 18 months to get decided. Corporate strategies will be disrupted by then.”

While investing in Mexico, German carmakers have quadrupled light vehicle production in the United States over the past seven years to 850,000 units, more than half of which are exported from there, Germany’s VDA automotive industry association said.

“In the long term, the United States would be shooting itself in the foot by imposing tariffs or other trade barriers,” VDA President Matthias Wissmann said in a statement.

German carmakers employ about 33,000 workers in the United States and German automotive suppliers about 77,000 more, the VDA said.

Speaking in tabloid newspaper Bild, German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel said that rather than trying to penalize German carmakers, the United States should instead respond by building better and more desirable cars.

Norbert Roettgen, head of Germany’s foreign affairs committee, said Berlin needed to take Trump’s comments seriously. “He seems to be absolutely focused on short-term job interests and security interests … not that he is looking for free trade so much, but more for protection,” he told Reuters.

MEXICAN PLANS

Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz and BMW already have sizeable factories in the United States where they build higher-margin sports utility vehicles (SUVs) for export to Asia and Europe.

Around 65 percent of BMW’s production from its factory in Spartanburg, South Carolina, is exported overseas. BMW builds the X3, X4, X5 and X6 models in the United States.

“It is surprising that Trump singles out the carmaker that exports more vehicles from the United States than any other manufacturer,” Evercore ISI analysts said.

A BMW spokeswoman said the planned plant in the central Mexican city of San Luis Potosi would build the BMW 3 Series from 2019, with the output intended for the world market. The plant would be an addition to existing 3 Series production facilities in Germany and China.

In June last year, BMW broke ground on the plant, pledging to invest $2.2 billion in Mexico by 2019 for annual production of 150,000 cars.

Daimler has said it plans to begin assembling Mercedes-Benz vehicles in 2018 from a $1 billion facility shared with Renault-Nissan in Aguascalientes in Mexico. A spokesman for Daimler declined to comment on Trump’s remarks.

Last year, VW’s Audi division inaugurated a $1.3 billion production facility with 150,000 vehicle production capacity near Puebla, Mexico. Audi said it would build electric and petrol Q5 SUVs in Mexico.

Audi declined to comment on Monday. VW also declined to comment on Trump’s remarks but noted it was investing another $900 million in its U.S. plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Trump called Germany a great car producer, saying Mercedes-Benz cars were a frequent sight in New York, but claimed there was not enough reciprocity. Germans were not buying Chevrolets at the same rate, he said, calling the business relationship an unfair one-way street.

Chevrolet sales have fallen sharply in Europe since parent company General Motors (GM.N) in 2013 said it would drop the Chevrolet brand in Europe by the end of 2015. Since then, GM has focused instead on promoting its Opel and Vauxhall marques.

Asked by Reuters whether Trump could take any steps to make it easier for GM to sell more American-made cars in Europe, GM Chief Executive Mary Barra said the company aimed to build cars in markets where they are sold.

“We’re a global company so we’re going to continue that focus just because from an economic perspective that generally turns out to be the best framework,” she said. “I think there is a lot that we can work on with President-elect Trump.”

(h/t Reuters)

Trump Attacks Union Boss Who Fact Checked Him

Chuck Jones, president of United Steelworkers Local 1999, has been critical of Trump’s claim to have saved 1,100 jobs at the Indianapolis plant since Tuesday.But shortly after Jones appeared on CNN’s “Erin Burnett Out Front” program Wednesday night, the president-elect appeared to blame union leaders like him for companies leaving the U.S.

“Chuck Jones, who is President of United Steelworkers 1999, has done a terrible job representing workers. No wonder companies flee country!” Trump wrote.

He followed up with another attack just over an hour later: “If United Steelworkers 1999 was any good, they would have kept those jobs in Indiana.”

Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who is also the governor of Indiana, gave a very different description of the union back in March. He tweeted a photo of a meeting he had about Carrier with Jones and Local 1999 members, calling them “hardworking.”

Jones has complained that Trump has fallen short of his campaign promise to keep Carrier from moving 1,400 jobs to Mexico.

“You made a promise to keep all these jobs. You half-way delivered,” Jones told CNNMoney in an interview earlier Wednesday. “We expect you go back and keep all the jobs.”

Jones added that Trump should also help the 350 workers at an Indianapolis plant owned by another company, Rexnord, which is also slated to move to Mexico. Workers there are also members of USW Local 1999.

“Trump said no companies would be allowed to go to Mexico,” Jones said. “There are more than 300 people over there at Rexnord. He needs to deliver for them as well.”

Jones did not get to speak with Trump when the President-elect visited Carrier last week. But he said he was angry when Trump praised Carrier for “keeping 1,100 people” in jobs that won’t move to Mexico. The real number is 800.

To get the higher number, Carrier and Trump are counting 300 administrative and engineering jobs at a different facility in Indianapolis that were never at risk of being shipped to Mexico.

Carrier is still shifting about 600 jobs building fan coils to Mexico sometime next year. Under the deal with Trump, Carrier only agreed to keep the part of the plant that builds furnaces open, saving the 800 jobs in Indianapolis.

Carrier confirmed to CNNMoney on Friday that it never planned to move the 300 administrative and engineering positions.

“He’s lying his a– off,” Jones said about Trump’s claim of saving 1,100 jobs. “That’s not just my feeling. The numbers prove he’s lying his a– off. It’s a damn shame when you come in and make a false statements like that.”

Later Wednesday Jones elaborated in an interview with Erin Burnett.

Jones said many of the workers whose jobs may now be saved are grateful to Trump, but that some workers who are still worried about losing their jobs are angry.

“We have a lot of our members, when word was coming out… they thought they would have a job. Then they found out Friday, that most likely they weren’t,” he said.

Burnett asked if Jones thought Trump should apologize, and he said, “I think he ought to make sure he gets all the facts straight before he starts talking about what he’s done.”

“I’m extremely grateful for what he did. There’s 800 people who have jobs… It’s not all one sided. I just wished it had been handled in more of a professional matter.”

The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment about the jobs still moving to Mexico.

Jones said he hopes the company will offer workers the chance to leave voluntarily with the severance package that was previously negotiated — one week of pay for every year of service.

Ideally, more senior workers at the plant would take the package and retire, which would save the jobs of younger workers. The plant has a large number of senior employees.

“For workers who have 40 years in and were getting close to retirement, that 40 weeks pay might look pretty good,” Jones said. But severance talks have yet to start.

(h/t CNN)

Update

Jones wrote a follow-up explaining his side.

Trump Saves Carrier Jobs at Expense of Taxpayers

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump visited a factory in Indiana on Thursday to kick off a “thank you tour” for his election win and celebrate persuading air conditioner maker Carrier Corp to preserve around 1,000 jobs in the state rather than move them to Mexico.

The Republican businessman toured the plant in Indianapolis and shook hands with workers on an assembly line. He was due to make remarks there later in the day.

In an early victory for Trump before he takes office on Jan. 20, Carrier said this week it agreed to keep more than 1,000 jobs at the plant and at its headquarters, while still planning to move more than 1,000 other U.S. jobs to Mexico.

Trump made keeping jobs in the United States one of the main issues of his election campaign and frequently pilloried Carrier for planning to ship jobs overseas as he appealed to blue-collar workers in the Midwest.

Though the company is still outsourcing Indiana jobs to Mexico, the deal marks a quick win for Trump, who has spent most of his time since the Nov. 8 election in New York building his team ahead of the handover of power from President Barack Obama.

Carrier confirmed that Indiana agreed to give the company $7 million in tax incentives. A source briefed on the matter said the tax incentives are over 10 years and the company has agreed to invest $16 million in the state, which is run by Governor Mike Pence, Trump’s vice president-elect.

Trump spokesman Jason Miller told reporters the Carrier deal is proof that “this administration is going to make good on our promises to keep jobs here in America.”

But Carrier, a unit of United Technologies Corp (UTX.N),

still plans to move 600 jobs from the plant to Mexico, the Wall Street Journal said. Reuters reported earlier this week Carrier also still intends to close a factory in Huntington, Indiana, that employs 700 people making controls for heating, cooling and refrigeration and move the jobs to Mexico by 2018.

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, who lost the Democratic primary to Clinton, said the Carrier deal is incomplete and leaves the incoming Trump administration open to threats from companies.

“Trump has endangered the jobs of workers who were previously safe in the United States. Why? Because he has signaled to every corporation in America that they can threaten to offshore jobs in exchange for business-friendly tax benefits and incentives,” Sanders wrote in a Washington Post opinion piece on Thursday.

He noted that Trump had originally said he would save 2,100 jobs that Carrier planned to move to Mexico.

“Let’s be clear: It is not good enough to save some of these jobs,” Sanders said.

Despite Trump’s deal, employers elsewhere in Indiana are laying off five times that many workers because of foreign competition.

Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim said on Thursday that if Trump succeeds as U.S. president, it would benefit major trading partner Mexico because of increased employment and U.S. economic growth.

(h/t Reuters)

Reality

Trump will be called a hero from his supports for saving 1,100 jobs, while completely ignoring that the salaries will be paid for almost entirely by the taxpayers of Indiana.

Instead of taxing Carrier to prevent jobs from leaving, as Trump promised during the campaign, instead he is doing the exact opposite by giving them millions of dollars in tax cuts at the state level, while the company’s top five executives are still making more than $50 million dollars a year each.

Ivanka Trump Lies About Trump Organization’s Paid Parental Leave

In an apparent contradiction to what Ivanka Trump said on “Good Morning America” yesterday, the Trump Organization has suggested that not all of its employees are eligible to receive eight weeks of paid maternity and adoption leave.

Deirdre Rosen, the senior vice president of human resources for the Trump Organization, told ABC News that the Trump Organization does offer a an eight-week paid parental leave policy, but said that may not be the case at the various properties that comprise GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s sprawling empire.

“The Trump Organization is proud of the family friendly environment it fosters throughout its portfolio. The Trump Organization, along with the lifestyle brand, Ivanka Trump, a company separate from the Trump Organization, wholly owned by Ivanka Trump, both offer an industry leading eight-week paid parental leave policy,” Rosen said in a statement. “The policies and practices allowing employees to enjoy a healthy work-life balance vary from property to property. We take an individualized approach to helping employees manage family and work responsibilities.”

During an interview Wednesday on “Good Morning America,” Ivanka Trump told ABC News anchor Amy Robach that all of Trump’s employees are offered paid maternity leave and adoption leave.

Robach asked if the benefit is applicable to all Trump Organization workers. Ivanka Trump responded: “It is and also adoption leave.”

The Trump Organization declined to release copies of its employee handbooks to ABC News, saying “the organization is a private business and will not be providing their handbooks which are considered proprietary.”

ABC News has asked the company to provide the sections in the employee handbook outlining the Trump Organization and Ivanka Trump’s family leave policies. The company has not yet responded to that request.

The Trump Organization also declined to elaborate on which employees are eligible for the eight-week paid parental leave.

The Trump campaign told ABC News this afternoon that the statement from Trump’s company “needs no further comment.”

Here is the full exchange between Robach and Ivanka Trump:

ROBACH: You’re an executive vice president at the Trump Organization. You said last night that the Trump Organization headed by your father does offer paid maternity leave for its employees. Is that for all of the thousands of employees of your father?

IVANKA TRUMP: It is and also adoption leave. So it’s a great thing and at my own business since inception I’ve offered eight weeks paid leave, only 10 percent of American companies offer that benefit, so it is quite unique and this policy is to encourage more companies and to encourage all Americans to be able to get the benefit of it should they be new mothers because it’s so critical and important.

(h/t ABC News)

Reality

If it does offer parental leave, that’s news to employees at many of the Trump Organization’s hotels.

The Huffington Post on Wednesday morning checked the validity of Ivanka Trump’s comments to ABC. Employees at the Trump SoHo, New York and Miami hotels, as well as the Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida, all said that they do not offer workers paid maternity leave. Instead, they said that the company complied with the Family and Medical Leave Act, a federal law that requires companies to give employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid time off for the adoption or birth of a child.

An undated employee handbook for the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas, obtained by HuffPost, states that workers there are entitled to unpaid family leave, in accordance with the FMLA. The manual notes that employees must “substitute their earned and unused vacation days and personal days for any otherwise unpaid FMLA leave.” That is, if employees want paid maternity or paternity leave, they have to use other paid time off that they’ve banked.

Media

Good Morning America via Yahoo News

Trump Policy Staffers Quit After Not Being Paid

Many of Donald Trump’s Washington, D.C., policy staffers quit working for the campaign after not being paid or publicly recognized, according to a new report in The Washington Post.

According to former employees, they were told they would be paid when Corey Lewandowski was campaign manager. But Paul Manafort, who replaced Lewandowski in July, said the staffers would remain unpaid.

“It’s a complete disaster,” a campaign adviser told the Post. “They use and abuse people. The policy office fell apart in August when the promised checks weren’t delivered.”

Jason Miller, a campaign spokesman, said that the D.C. policy shop has been “very successful” but added that “no such oral agreements were made” in respect to paying the staffers.

The two leaders of the policy shop, Rick Dearborn and John Mashburn, allegedly promised the workers that the money was coming. The report notes, however, that Dearborn failed to get an approved budget for the D.C. branch after Manafort was appointed.

“I heard it from Dearborn, I heard it from Mashburn. It was understood that we would be paid. The campaign never discussed how much the pay would be. It was never in writing,” another staffer told the newspaper.

“There were some people who were treating it as a full-time job. I suspect that those people were quite astonished when the pay didn’t come through.”

There were also workers who did not hold the policy shop’s leaders responsible.

“Rick Dearborn was always professional and forthcoming with me,” said the former policy coordinator.

“I was certainly under the expectation I would be paid at some point, but I don’t blame Rick Dearborn.”

The list of staffers who left the D.C. policy shop includes Ying Ma, a former staffer to Trump adviser Ben Carson; Tera Dahl, a former assistant to ex-Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.); J.D. Gordon, the shop’s director of national security; and conservative writer William Triplett, among others.

The staffers who remained in the Washington office are now working on a volunteer basis, the report added.

(h/t The Hill)

 

Trump Tweets ISIS and Bad Economic Numbers are Obama’s Fault, Both Not True

Twitter

In his Twitter account, Donald Trump fired off a tweet blasting President Obama’s decision-making for causing ISIS and a horrible economy, claims that are as far from reality as one can get.

Reality

What was crazy about Trump’s claims, that we are seeing worst economic numbers since the Great Depression, is that there is no reading of any data that puts our economy at the same level of the Great Depression or even the Great Recession.

Also there was this little thing of the Labor Department’s monthly jobs and economic report released just a day after Trump’s tweet which shows a bright economic outlook. Whoops!

The Labor Department report said employers added 255,000 jobs in July continuing the longest streak of private-sector job growth, the unemployment rate remains below the natural rate at 4.9%, and the labor participation rate went up, all beating economic expectations. In response to the report the NASDAQ surged so high stocks are into record territory.

The jobs report was so good that usual critic Jeff Cox of NBC said “It’s hard to find anything bad, even for a skeptic.“

The even crazier claim in Trump’s tweet was how “Obama gave us ISIS.” A quick history lesson, ISIS was formed in 1999 and greatly expanded in 2003 by former members of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party who were out of a job after the George W. Bush-lead invasion of Iraq, which was based on faulty evidence. Donald Trump (as well as Fox News) can’t rewrite history here, Barack Obama was not a United States Senator until 2005, two years after the start of the invasion.

Fact is, over the past 2 years ISIS has been, losing ground, pushed out of key cities, and cut off from revenue producing oil fields. While ISIS still has the ability to inspire attacks in other countries, the multi-nation military response is working.

Finally, the “rise of Iran” may sound scary to some on first read, but as experts at think-tanks and NATO have argued, their rise is unsustainable, short lived, and a good thing as it will help towards stabilizing the Middle-East.

Donald Trump and City of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Now Also Feuding

After Donald Trump compared it to a “war zone” on Tuesday, the city of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, joined the parents of a dead soldier, our country’s fire marshals, Paul Ryan and a human baby as the most recent addition to Donald Trump’s ever-growing list of mortal enemies.

At a rally in Virginia, Trump said the city of 49,673, which he had flown into the night before, “looked like a war zone where you (once had) these massive plants,” according to the Associated Press.

Ben Jacobs, a reporter for The Guardian, said the words came shortly before noon Tuesday.

Tuesday night, Harrisburg fired back, saying in a statement that Trump made “an unfortunate mistake” disparaging the city “after a mere glance from the window of his airplane.”

Mr. Trump has made an unfortunate mistake in disparaging Pennsylvania’s capital city after a mere glance from the window of his airplane. Harrisburg is renowned as the heart of our commonwealth and a capital of unique beauty and charm.

 

Mr. Trump should know that Harrisburg and its residents are an integral part of the United States, which he is vying to lead. Its rich history and natural beauty have won both the respect and acclaim of some of America’s greatest leaders and patriots.

(h/t Gawker, PennLive)

Trump To Pay Thousands For Retaliating Against Workers On Day He Accepts The GOP Nomination

Just a few hours before he officially accepts the presidential nomination of the Republican party, Donald Trump agreed to pay a $11,200 federal settlement for retaliating against workers who voted to unionize at his eponymous Las Vegas hotel.

Trump, who claims he “never settles” when sued, agreed to pay the workers after the National Labor Relations Board found that Trump’s corporation had unfairly challenged the union vote and illegally retaliated against the workers who led the organization effort. Trump must now pay back wages to two workers, one of whom the hotel fired and another who was denied a promotion for convincing her 500-plus co-workers to join the Culinary Workers Union in Las Vegas. Under the terms of the settlement, Trump did not admit breaking federal labor laws.

Workers at the hotel told reports at the LA Times that the Trump corporation threatened and intimidated them in the lead up to the union vote.

Trump co-owns the Vegas hotel with mogul Phil Ruffin, who took the podium Wednesday night at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland to extol Trump’s virtues as a boss.

“As a result of his vision, he’s put tens of thousands of American workers to work,” Ruffin said. “And these are high-paid jobs.”

But the workers employed at Trump’s Vegas hotel tell a different story.

Trump hotel housekeeper Maria Jaramillo told ThinkProgress in February that she is paid much less and has much fewer health benefits than workers at other hotels on the Las Vegas Strip.

“At Mandalay Bay I had health insurance for free, a retirement [account], every year I got a raise, I got holiday pay,” she said, explaining that she left that job to raise her children and couldn’t get it back. “Over here [at Trump International] we don’t get an [annual] raise, we have to pay for our insurance, and we have no retirement. It’s a big difference. I’m not making enough to give my kids a better future.”

The Trump International Hotel pays its workers, on average, $3 an hour less than the city’s other hotels. And while the company was forced by the National Labor Relations Board to recognize the union earlier this year, they have so far refused to begin negotiating a contract.

“We deserve one. We’re not second-class workers,” Jaramillo said.

Throughout his campaign, Trump has pitched himself as a friend of the working class, mainly by promising to stop the outsourcing of jobs to other countries. Yet that message may not be resonating in Cleveland, the host city of the RNC.

A group of local workers gathered on the eve of the convention on Sunday to denounce Trump’s record of repeatedly refusing to pay workers and contractors he has hired, of opposing a raise in the federal minimum wage, and of fighting workers’ attempts to organize.

“We’ve all heard Mr. Trump’s appeals to working people,” said Mike Kilbane, a lifelong Cleveland resident and construction worker. “But it’s a ruse, a smokescreen. It’s faux populism, a sad attempt to divide the working class in this country.”

Citing Trump’s dealings with his workers in Las Vegas and elsewhere, Kilbane continued: “This man is a card-carrying member of the ruling class, someone who has known privilege and entitlement his entire life. He puts his own personal gain and profit over any other consideration, and he’ll do anything to make sure it continues.”

(h/t Think Progress)

Links

Culinary Workers Union 226 article.

Trump Flip-Flops on Raising the Minimum Wage

In a reversal, Donald Trump expressed openness to raising the federal minimum wage during an interview on Wednesday.

“I’m looking at that, I’m very different from most Republicans,” the presumptive GOP presidential nominee told CNN Wednesday about the prospect of increasing wages.

You have to have something you can live on. But what I ‘m really looking to do is get people great jobs so they make much more money than that, much more money than the $15.

The federal minimum wage is $7.25, but labor groups have been pushing for it to be raised to $15.

During a November debate, Trump voiced opposition to raising the minimum wage.

“I hate to say it, but we have to leave it the way it is,” he said during the debate.

During a November appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Trump said the current minimum wage is too high and was slowing job growth.

“We have to become competitive with the world. Our taxes are too high, our wages are too high, everything is too high,” he said. “What’s going to happen is now people are going to start firing people.”

On Wednesday, Trump did caution that lawmakers would have to be careful not to raise the minimum too much.

“If you start playing around too much with that lower level number, you are not going to be competitive,” he said, before reiterating that he’s “open to doing something” with the federal minimum wage.

Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton backs a $12 minimum wage and has supported local attempts to push for $15 per hour; her rival, Bernie Sanders, supports a $15 federal minimum wage.

Republicans at large are against raising that number. Rick Santorum is the only GOP presidential candidate who backed raising the minimum wage. Ben Carson briefly signaled openness before walking that back.

(h/t The Hill)

Reality

Just a few months ago Trump said he would lower the minimum wage during a Republican debate:

Taxes too high, wages too high.

And again on Fox News he doubled-down:

Whether it’s taxes or wages, if they’re too high we’re not going to be able to compete with other countries.

And then he told auto workers right to their faces that they make too much money.

Media

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