AFL-CIO boss Richard Trumka flounders against Trump's stellar record on labor
Trumka was called to speak on Labor Day by Fox News’s Chris Wallace about one of his old bugaboos, NAFTA, and it’s obvious he doesn’t quite know what to say.
Did we just hear he said he WANTED more NAFTA? That trade pact he’s hated for years and often said he wanted scrapped? Suddenly, he wants NAFTA the way a free marketer does, given that the economies of Canada, Mexico and the U.S. are all “integrated?” Talk about singing soprano. Let’s see him try to sell that to the hardhats.
Then he gets even more Clinton-globalista, by saying he wants a deal that “works” for all the workers of the NAFTA area – Canadian workers, Mexican workers and American workers, not just American workers alone. As if what’s good for one in a trade pact scenario doesn’t mean some give-ups from another. Let’s see him try to sell that one to the Caterpillar-boot brigades, too.
Trumka let slip a little detail about how he was working with the USTR office for enforcement. When has any president allowed AFL-CIO that much input in the past? Again, he got all he wanted, and that leaves him up a tree, exposed as a Democrat operative in a business suit playing advocate of the working man. Success is a problem for him because it undermines Democrats.
It’s also significant that Trumka emphasized a lot that he was non-partisan, objective, a caller of “balls and strikes,” not a Democratic Party shill. Obviously, he’s a bit scared of his union members and all the good stuff President Trump has brought for them.
Which highlights what is really going on here: With Trump giving workers what they want, Trumka is increasingly irrelevant. That explains his sudden nice-guy persona, and his strangely shifting positions on NAFTA. For him, the game was never about the working man, it was about advancing the aims of the left. Now he’s in the uncomfortable position of being a successful union leader who got his workers the jobs and wage hikes they wanted, yet he can’t capitalize on it. His real game has always been getting votes for Democrats and everyone now knows it.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/09/aflcio_boss_richard_trumka_flounders_against_trumps_stellar_record_on_labor.html