Retirement ‘bittersweet’ for union boss who challenged Trump
INDIANAPOLIS—When Chuck Jones joined the United Steel Workers, unions flexed their power to strike and crossing a picket line could be met with brute force.
That’s now a distant memory, says the retiring president of USW Local 1999, who grabbed headlines in December after he publicly accused then-President-elect Donald Trump of lying about how many jobs he was saving in a deal with furnace and air conditioner maker Carrier Corp.
Like unions across the U.S., the Indianapolis local, which represents workers from Carrier and bearing manufacturer Rexnord Corp., has shed members as factories downsized or shuttered. Many are moving to Mexico, where labor is cheaper.
“You want to leave a job better than you got it. But working-class people in general—we’re not doing good,” said Jones, 65, whose thick, gray mustache, artful use of profanity and ever-present cigarette wedged between his fingers give him the appearance of union boss straight from central casting.
Jones became a steel worker straight out of high school in 1969 during a high tide of the U.S. labor movement that helped propel a generation of blue-collar workers into the middle class.
He says his retirement at the beginning of June was “bittersweet” after decades of declining fortunes for working people.
Elected as the local’s vice president in 1985, just before the union went on strike, Jones at one point could command workers to shut down their machines if labor issues weren’t resolved.
He was made president in 1996, two years after President Bill Clinton finalized the North American Free Trade Agreement, which led to a big increase in trade among the U.S., Mexico and Canada, but also encouraged U.S. manufacturers to relocate operations to Mexico to take advantage of cheap labor there. Jones’ union has also been affected by changes in Indiana that made it easier to replace striking workers and by passage of a right-to-work law that made union membership optional.
“I used to have a little bit of power,” Jones said. “Now the story is completely different. First off, the guy is going to say, ‘(Expletive) you, I ain’t shutting nothing down.’”
In recent years, contract negotiations have been aimed at trying to give up as few benefits as possible while making sure wages keep pace with inflation. Helplessness has set in, he says.
Last year Carrier, its parent company United Technologies, and Rexnord all announced plans to shut down at least part of their Indiana operations. All told, about 1,700 jobs are expected to be cut, including about 850 union workers at Carrier and Rexnord.
“If they woulda come to us and said, ‘Hey, you guys are making too much money, we need you to work with us on being more competitive,’ could we have got there? I don’t know. But we sure as hell would have tried,” said Jones, who feels that people have unjustly blamed unions as uncompetitive. “Neither company came to us.”