Labor chief to Trump: Working people don’t want a ‘savior’

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is pushing President-elect Donald Trump to be more supportive of unions, arguing that workers don’t want to be “manipulated.”

Trump’s ascension to the White House was largely based on his success with working-class voters in the Rust Belt, but some labor leaders remain skeptical of the billionaire businessman-turned politician.

“Working people do not want a savior to speak for us,” Trumka wrote in a New York Times op-ed published Tuesday. “We want to raise our own voices through our unions — and those voices are more essential than ever.”

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“We need a president who sees workers as partners to be engaged, not as subjects to be manipulated,” he added.

The labor chief highlighted Trump’s push to keep hundreds of Carrier jobs from moving from Indiana to Mexico in a deal announced after the election last month, but pushed for more detailed economic positions.

Trump feuded with the president of the Carrier union earlier this month after the union leader accused Trump of being misleading about the number of jobs saved in the deal.

Trumka wrote Tuesday that “publicity stunts and Twitter rants are no substitute for a comprehensive, coherent economic strategy that invests in America and lifts up the voices and the power of working people.”

Trumka said that unions are “critical to the fabric of our democracy” and questioned Trump’s motivations.

“Mr. Trump’s emerging cabinet and policy pronouncements seem to treat actual working people as bottom lines rather than human beings, our unions as a threat rather than a partner, and rising wages as a problem rather than the foundation of our prosperity,” Trumka wrote.

“If Mr. Trump’s strategy to keep jobs in America relies on busting unions, keeping wages down, deregulating everything in sight and cutting taxes for the wealthy, he’ll certainly fail, and in the process he’ll undermine the foundations of American democracy,” he warned.