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Trump is Failing Workers, Breaking Promises
Candidate Trump had a populist tone to every campaign rally, banging the drum for jobs. Although all candidates and politicians say the same empty statements, Trump's delivery worked. The focus on jobs caused millions to vote for him thinking he was actually going to implement policies to help them. They did not realize that he had no intent nor ability to do so. They bought the lie and we all pay the price.
...many blue-collar voters embraced him as the presidential candidate who would lift them out of their economic rut. “I will bring jobs back and get wages up,” Trump said
However, Trump has repeatedly lied about job creation that either didn't occur at all or preceded the election entirely.
- ...claimed credit for the opening of the Corsa coal mine in Pennsylvania, even though the company began digging that mine two months before the election.
- ...said he was responsible for Ford’s decision to cancel construction of a Ford Focus factory in Mexico and expand jobs in Michigan (to build electric and self-driving cars). Ford said those moves were made because of market conditions, and undercutting Mr. Trump, the company announced in June that it would build the Focus in China.
- In exchange for Indiana’s providing $7 million in tax breaks, Carrier promised to keep 800 of 1,200 jobs it had planned to move to Mexico. But the Indianapolis plant has announced plans to lay off 600 workers, whose jobs are still moving to Mexico.
Besides not actually creating jobs, in its brief time in power the Trump administration has quickly taken numerous steps to harm workers.
Using the Congressional Review Act (CRA), Republicans in Congress passed and Trump signed into law five rollbacks of important worker protections, including a bill giving employers a free pass to falsify or neglect to keep accurate workplace injury records and increasing the odds that worker will be injured or even killed, and overturning a rule that tried to stop taxpayer money from going to companies that steal wages, endanger workers, and violate their employees' civil rights.
Several basic worker protections have delayed or weakened by the White House including:
...working to deny 4.2 million workers eligibility for overtime pay by revoking the Obama Administration's overtime rule, delaying rules that protect workers from toxic substances including beryllium and silica, and delaying a rule that protected workers' retirement savings by requiring investment advisers to recommend the products that are in the best interest of their clients.
Trump's proposed budget would cut billions of dollars of funding from the Labor Department.
...labor groups are criticizing Mr. Trump’s plan to chop Labor Department spending by 20 percent, including cuts to its job-training programs.... and damage the Department's ability to enforce federal labor laws and protect and support the nation's workers and retirees.
He claims to love coal miners but "his proposed budget would hurt coal miners in numerous ways. It would cut money for mine safety enforcement and eliminate funding for the Appalachian Regional Commission, which has aided hundreds of coal counties by financing job retraining and social services, helping to cut Appalachia’s poverty rates nearly in half."
Janice Bellace, an industrial relations expert at the Wharton School, voiced alarm that the Trump administration seems far more concerned about the loss of several thousand coal jobs than what she sees as a far bigger threat: the prospect that automation, artificial intelligence and robots, such as self-driving cars and trucks, will wipe out millions of jobs.
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/02/opinion/sunday/is-trump-really-pro-worker.html