More layoffs at US factory despite deal with Trump

INDIANAPOLIS — A US heating and air conditioning company laid off more than 200 factory workers yesterday despite a deal with Donald Trump intended to keep the plant from moving to Mexico.

Trump had hailed the late 2016 deal with the Carrier factory in Indiana, which he made shortly before becoming president, as keeping his campaign promise to save US manufacturing jobs.

The $7 million tax incentive deal kept the plant from moving to Mexico and saved approximately 1,100 jobs.

But Carrier's parent company United Technologies said the deal still allowed it to trim its workforce at the Indiana plant, and it engaged in two rounds of layoffs — approximately 300 workers in July and another 215 on Thursday.

"We continue to actively engage with our workers and the community to provide impacted employees with resources to make a smooth transition," the company said in a statement.

Carrier factory worker Renee Elliott, who voted for Trump in the hopes that he would save her job, told a news conference Wednesday night that the president should have done more.

"I now feel betrayed. I feel angry. And I feel forgotten," said the 44-yearold who had worked at the plant as a press operator for five years.

The layoffs underscored the challenge of fulfilling Trump's campaign promise to save blue-collar American manufacturing jobs and prevent factories from relocating to other countries.