More Than 1,600 Factory Workers Are Being Fired After Trump Said He'd Save Their Jobs: Here’s What They Have to Say

The day after Trump soaked up the adulation for saving 730 Carrier jobs, he Tweeted, “Rexnord of Indiana is moving to Mexico and rather viciously firing all of its 300 workers. This is happening all over our country. No more!”

Rexnord, however, was unfazed by Trump’s 140-character Twitter strike. Chuck Jones says, “Trump can’t play that military card he used against Carrier on Rexnord.”

In mid-December Rexnord told the state of Indiana 350 jobs would relocate to Monterrey by June 2017. Add that to 550 jobs leaving from Carrier in Indianapolis and 738 workers being fired from the Huntington factory that manufactures control panels for heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning units. All told more than 1,600 jobs are leaving that Trump vowed to save.

‘I STILL SUPPORT TRUMP’

The Indianapolis workers are in the United Steelworkers; the Huntington workers are members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 983. Among workers who say they cast a ballot, half voted for Donald Trump, including some union officials.

A young-looking 47, John Feltner is a new grandfather and vice president of the USW Local 1999 Rexnord unit. He’s also a two-time victim of outsourcing. In 2008 he was booted after 10 years at an Indianapolis-based Navistar plant that cast diesel engines for Ford, and which “shut down and moved to Huntsville, Alabama, a right-to-work state.”                                                                                                                                                                            Employed at Rexnord since 2013, Feltner says, “We thought we were going to retire here.” Plant workers were told in mid-October, in the homestretch of the presidential race, that executives were mothballing the plant. Feltner says as he listened to the announcement, “I was pissed, angry, felt kicked in the gut. The closure just doesn’t affect 300 people at Rexnord. It affects their families. I went up and down the businesses in the area. They employ people. They said this is going to affect us.”

When Trump started Tweeting about Rexnord, Feltner says, “We were ecstatic. We saw what he did with Carrier. It was unprecedented. That got a lot of hopes up for people over there.”

Feltner voted for Trump. Now he is losing his job that Trump indicated he would save. Feltner says, “Do I still support him? Yes I do, if he is going to bring jobs back to America. I’m tired of jobs leaving this country. I’m tired of the middle class getting smaller and smaller.

NO BUYER’S REMORSE—YET

Robert James says, “A lot of our people at Carrier voted for Trump. Some said because he is going to protect our jobs. They may not have buyers’ remorse now, but they will later.”

Tim Mathis, 51, is losing his job at Rexnord after 12 years. His prior job was eliminated in 2004 when a different bearing manufacturer shifted production to China. He says, “People are pissed off, they were hoping for a change. Million and millions of jobs are leaving the country and the fat cats are getting fatter. ”

A fourth-generation union member Mathis says, “My dad was an autoworker, my grandfathers were mineworkers. You don’t vote Republican.” But he voted for Trump “because I thought it was best for America. I’m going to give the man his due. I think there is all kinds of potential.”

Don Zering, the USW Local 1999 Rexnord unit president, “voted for the candidate who didn’t win.” But he asks, “If Trump could do what he did with Carrier, and he wasn’t even the president, why didn’t Obama do it?”

John Feltner claims at Rexnord at most 10 percent voted for Clinton with the overwhelming majority going for Trump. He says among unionized auto and railroad workers he talked to in Indianapolis, the buzz was in favor of Trump.

Time and again workers mention the same issue as to why they abandoned the Democrats: NAFTA. Feltner says, “The NAFTA bill is still fresh in people’s minds. The international was all, ‘Vote Democrat, Democrat, Democrat.’ Then they make an announcement about jobs going away and it’s because of NAFTA. The workers connect that to the Democrats, and Hillary was saddled with that.”

Chuck Jones agrees. “Bill Clinton is the one who gave us NAFTA and I give a rat’s ass what he did with women, but once he did that I was done with him.”

During his campaign Trump repeatedly invoked “the forgotten men and women of our country.” As a slogan it was unremarkable; it could be used in any election. But combined with his denunciations of free-trade deals, rage at job-stealing immigrants and nations, and barnstorming of the Rust Belt, those words described how many workers felt who have been abandoned if not abused by the Democrats.

WORKERS’ SELF-INTEREST

Workers have a sharp sense of their own self-interest. Talking to them dispels the liberal myth that “the white working class just voted overwhelmingly against its own economic interests,” as Paul Krugman contends about Trump’s election.

Brian Hunter, 41, who’s worked at Rexnord for 16 years, says, “I rooted for Trump, I voted for him. He’s someone different, something different. Did he save all of the jobs? No. Did he try? Yes. Did he do more than our last president? Yeah.” Like other workers who mentioned the plant moving to Mexico, Hunter is adamant that Mexicans are not the enemy. “Do I blame the Mexican people? No. They didn’t buy the company and move it.”

Among Clinton voters, none pulled the lever for her with any zeal. Terry Browning, 55, who has worked at the Carrier plant in Huntington for 30 years, saw Clinton’s political experience as an asset. Other Clinton voters mustered “the lesser evil.”

Lakita Clark, 40, who’s put in 15 years at Carrier, says of Clinton, “I wasn’t big on Hillary, but I supported her. I am all for voting for a woman president, but I was rooting for Bernie. I liked him more than Hillary.”

In Clark’s view, her vote for Clinton was a vote against her self-interest. “If Hillary won, we would still be out of a job.” Clark also observes, with merit, that if Clinton “had Sanders for her vice president, she would have won.”

Clark’s enthusiasm for Sanders is common among Carrier and Rexnord workers. They seemed genuinely excited about Sanders, and the few who didn’t support him think he is sincere. Unabashed Trump supporters like Tim Mathis think Trump would have lost to Sanders. Jones, whose Steelworkers local endorsed Sanders in the primary, felt “Bernie coulda beat Trump. A lot of people who were turned off by Hillary and didn’t vote or voted third party would have rallied behind Bernie.”

To be fair, the belief Sanders would have won doesn’t consider how Trump could have pummeled him as “Commie Bernie.” But the outpouring for Sanders’ shows Democrats had a winning formula—appeal to the economic interests of all workers—but one rejected by the Clinton and Obama wing of the party that has dominated it for the last 25 years.

That most workers are more anxious about loss of healthcare than a cut in pay points to the failure of Obamacare as well. It reduced the number of uninsured by 21.3 million in six years. But it is a cumbersome system that provides little security for workers who have to contend with price spikes and switching plans to ensure some basic coverage. Obamacare has reduced the number of families that have trouble paying medical bills by 24 percent, though it appears to be leveling off. A universal system that guaranteed quality healthcare to everyone regardless of income or employment would give workers leverage over massively profitable companies like Carrier.

At the same time, some Trump supporters were drawn to his dark side. Travis Michael, 40, who has worked at Carrier’s Huntington factory for 19 years, says, “I kind of like his crazy ways. Trump said what’s on his mind. He’s more of a person.” Michael says he supported him mainly “about the Carrier issue,” adding, “Plus, Hillary wanted to take our guns.”

Tim Mathis says, “We need to deal with jobs and immigration.” He says it’s not a racial issue, explaining that his wife is from the Philippines. “The immigration system works. It’s not easy, but we went through it.”

Like others, John Feltner is in a wait-and-see mode. “We knew what we were going to get with Hillary. We don’t know what we are going to get with Trump; we still don’t know. It’s a shot in the dark. But it’s a shot.”