MAGA! Carrier Begins Layoffs At Plant Trump Crowed About Saving
July 24, 2017

Remember that amazing MAGA deal that Trump touted as the biggest and best win ever for American workers? You know, the one that cemented his status as the "Fighter for the American worker"? Here is the deal - shortly after the election* (Russian hacking to install Trump), he went to Indianapolis to work out a "deal" with Carrier to keep their plant open. It was slated to be closed and moved to Mexico, which would have mean over 1,400 jobs lost.

So Trump went down and finalized a deal that Pence had hammered out - HUGE tax cuts if the company agreed to keep the plant open, meaning most of the jobs would remain in Indianapolis.

Carrier was promised $7 million in tax breaks and various grants over a 10 year period. Carrier agreed to invest $16 million in "automation" at the plant. Hmm...how does "automation" save jobs for people?

Both Carrier and Trump were MAGA tweeting about the deal:

Welp...that was in November 2016. Apparently, automation still means they are letting people go - and they get to keep those fancy tax breaks. Just this past Thursday, about 9 months after Trump made his MAJOR announcement about all his MAGA promises coming true, Carrier started laying off staff. Over 300 staff were laid off as jobs began being outsourced to Mexico, exactly as planned before the Orange Buffoon tried to fix the deal. Best Dealmaker? I think not. Carrier reports that another 290 workers will be let go by December 22nd, just in time for Christmas.

The New Yorker interviewed a Carrier employee who just finalized her "departure paperwork" about what Carrier meant to the town and how Trump's promise (and subsequent broken promise) meant to her and her coworkers.

Brenda Battle worked at Carrier for 25 years, before she was offered a buyout to leave the company.

“I’ve been working at Carrier since I was thirty. I didn’t go to high school or college. My parents were union people. My dad was an oiler for G.M. I did a lot of babysitting before I joined the assembly line at Carrier. When I started, in 1992, they were threatening to move to Mexico, and any time they got pissed off, that was their old threat: ‘We’re gonna move to Mexico, anyway!’ That’s what management would say.

It used to be a fun place to work; I didn’t mind going. Then they started making changes that only benefit them: robots, cutting jobs. Just yesterday, they were talking about cutting a three-man blower-shelf crew—they deal with the forms that hold the blower on one side and the heating element on the other—down to two. But two people can’t do that job. My job running the press, it was a two-man job, but then they brought a robot in. The doors go down the conveyor belt now, and the robot stacks them in the cart.

It seemed like as soon as they first put the robots in, they made the announcement about layoffs a month later. I’ll never forget that day. They told everyone to meet them at the front of the plant. Then, when they got up there, that’s when they told us they were really moving to Mexico. It just went downhill after that."

So the robots came, Carrier went back to the "we are moving to Mexico" threat...and then Trump came in. Her comments are...pretty spot on.

Trump came in there to the factory last December and blew smoke up our asses. He wasn’t gonna save those jobs. And, if that’s the case, he would have saved us and Rexnord, a company around the corner from us that makes parts.

We had a mix of Trump supporters and Clinton supporters at the factory, I’d say. The ones that really supported him are quiet right now. Some of them got let go yesterday, too. We talked about Trump on the job, after the election. You could always tell who the Trump supporters were because they never participated in the conversation. It was about even, blacks and whites, for Trump. Also, some of them wore the hats. Not anymore, though."

See, even Trump supporters are suffering. Not just us liberal elites and libtards. Sad.

She went even farther:

“Personally, I think the President is a ‘rubber room’ politician. He’s crazy. He needs a straitjacket. He’s in there for his self. He’s not in there to help America keep jobs. Because if he was we wouldn’t be in the predicament that we’re in every day. He keeps howling, ‘Make America great.’ But he can’t make America great if all the jobs are leaving the States and going to Mexico."

This may be my favorite new description for Trump: Rubber Room Politician. Because it is the truth. Ok, then she really puts the nail in the coffin...with the saddest and most prescient description of Trump:

“I think the C.E.O. of Carrier and Trump was in bed together the whole time. That day Trump came to Carrier, those two were too chummy. The way they sniggled and giggled. That sneaky kind of shit-eating grin."

That is Trump. The man with the shit eating grin. And because of his lies and promises to Make America Great Again, at least 800 people who thought their jobs were saved are going to find themselves unemployed before Christmas this year.

Can you help us out?

For nearly 20 years we have been exposing Washington lies and untangling media deceit, but now Facebook is drowning us in an ocean of right wing lies. Please give a one-time or recurring donation, or buy a year's subscription for an ad-free experience. Thank you.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon