Carrier’s union president accused Donald Trump of significantly inflating the number of jobs he convinced the company to keep in Indiana, telling the Washington Post that the President-elect “lied his ass off.”
Trump last week visited the company’s Indianapolis plant to celebrate a deal he struck with Carrier’s parent company, United Technologies, to preserve 1,100 jobs there that would otherwise be sent to Mexico. Yet that number obscured the fact that some 350 of those positions were research and development jobs that the company never intended to dispatch to Mexico, or that around 80 were non-union clerical and supervisory positions, according to the Post.
United Steelworkers 1999 President Chuck Jones hoped that Trump would use his Dec. 1 visit to address the 550 Indianapolis jobs that would not be saved.
“But he got up there,” Jones said, “and, for whatever reason, lied his ass off.”
Trump’s speech to Carrier workers did not address the $7 million in tax breaks that the company received from the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, a state agency, to keep manufacturing jobs in the state. He promised on the campaign trail to “tax the hell” out of corporations like Carrier.
Nor did Trump mention that United Technologies still planned to send 700 jobs from a separate factory in Huntington, Indiana, to Monterrey, Mexico.
As Carrier workers from the Huntington factory, many of whom supported Trump, stood outside the Indianapolis plant holding signs asking the President-elect not to “forget” about them, Trump announced that the Indianapolis operation was keeping “over 1,100 people, which is so great.”
“Trump and Pence, they pulled a dog and pony show on the numbers,” Jones told the Post. “I almost threw up in my mouth.”
Trump and his backers are still pushing the 1,100 figure a week later, though Jones said he heard from Carrier that only 730 production jobs would stay.
Appearing on Fox News’ “Hannity” on Wednesday night, Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski praised the “1,100” jobs that the President-elect managed to keep in Indiana. He said that along with those jobs come “a great Christmas,” which Americans can “say again, merry Christmas, because Donald Trump is now the president.”
