President criticizes union chief in tweet
President Donald Trump criticized the leader of the nation’s largest union federation on Monday, escalating the feud between the administration and organized labor amid crucial negotiations for both sides over the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, had on Sunday disputed the White House’s strategy for renegotiating the NAFTA trade pact and argued that Trump had “done more to hurt workers than to help” them since taking office.
Those comments elicited a response from Trump, who called Trumka an ineffectual leader just as union members across the country prepared for Labor Day celebrations.
“Trumka, the head of the AFL-CIO, represented his union poorly on television this weekend,” Trump said in a tweet. “Some of the things he said were so again(s)t the working men and women of our country, and the success of the U.S. itself, that it is easy to see why unions are doing so poorly.”
The rift comes after the administration submitted a letter late last week formally notifying Congress that it would enter a trade agreement with Mexico, adding that Canada could be included at a later date “if it is willing.” The letter starts a 90-day process for reworking the trade deal ahead of a transition of presidential power in Mexico, as Trump seeks to fulfill a key campaign promise to revamp NAFTA ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.
The deal brokered between Mexico and the U.S. has many provisions that have earned the support of organized labor, including more robust rules for automobile production.
Speaking on Fox News, Trumka acknowledged the initial agreement included some improvements over the status quo but also argued “it’s pretty hard to see how that would work without having Canada in the deal.” Talks between Canadian and American officials fell apart late last week amid ongoing disagreements over dairy rules and the trade-dispute resolution process.
Trumka also criticized Trump over the Republican tax law passed last fall, arguing it would increase the outsourcing of American jobs. In addition, the union leader criticized the president for failing to defend an Obama-era rule mandating additional overtime pay and for failing to pass legislation to improve U.S. infrastructure, among other issues.
“Unfortunately, to date, the things he has done to hurt workers outpace what he has done to help workers,” Trumka said. “We’ll keep trying to find areas where we can work with him.”
Union membership nationwide has fallen markedly from the 1970s, with the percentage of American workers in a union dropping from about 25 percent in the 1970s to less than 11 percent in 2017, according to survey data. But among the general public, popular support for unions has risen steadily, to a 61 percent approval rating, a high point in more than a decade, according to Gallup polling.