In an unusual move, Donald Trump has announced plans to speak in Detroit this Wednesday, evidently seeking some political benefit from the autoworkers’ strike, saying he has always had workers’ backs.
The former president is unarguably seeking to woo Michigan workers. But Michigan’s workers – indeed, all workers – should remember that in his four years as president, Trump and his administration did far more to stab workers in the back than to have their backs.
Trump rolled back Obama-era protections that would have extended overtime pay to millions more workers. He didn’t lift a finger to raise the federal minimum wage, which has remained at a low $7.25 an hour since 2009.
His administration pushed to ease safety requirements for oil rig workers and relax rules for safety inspections in coal mines. Trump also eliminated the ban on a toxic pesticide, chlorpyrifos, that causes acute reactions in farmworkers and does nerve damage to children.
Trump boasted repeatedly of his huge infrastructure plans, trumpeting one infrastructure week after another. But that became a running joke as he, unlike President Joe Biden, utterly failed to enact an infrastructure plan and create the jobs that many construction workers were eager for.
Trump got one important piece of legislation through Congress: $1.5 trillion in tax cuts that went overwhelmingly to the rich and corporations, while giving peanuts to typical workers like the UAW members on strike.
As for unions, Trump doesn’t really support unions – what he supports is having union members support him. Whether it was his recent attack on UAW President Shawn Fain or his broadside against Richard Trumka, the late, highly respected AFL-CIO president, Trump has often sought to turn union members against their union leaders – a move that weakens unions and their ability to stand up to corporations and demand better pay and conditions.
In recent weeks, Trump has all but declared war on UAW leaders, saying that union members “are being sold down the river by their leadership.”
Trump even called on union members to stop paying union dues, a statement that would only come from someone who wants to cripple unions rather than strengthen them. In a statement that UAW President Fain saw as a betrayal of workers, unions and the state of Michigan, Trump once recommended that auto plants in Michigan move to lower-wage states to remain competitive.