March 28, 2024

Union Support Nosedives as Workers Express Regret for Trump Votes



President Donald Trump hands out pens to workers while signing a presidential proclamation on steel and aluminium tariffs, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Michael Reynolds/European Pressphoto Agency)


“Trump is for the rich,” one union member said.


By Jake Johnson / 05.04.2018



Many American union workers who voted for President Donald Trump in the 2016 election are increasingly beginning to regret their decision—and realize that Trump has been firmly on the side of the rich all along.

That’s according to new survey data published by Reuters on Friday, which shows that between March of 2017 and March of this year, Trump’s support among union members has fallen by 15 percent.

Bolstering the growing discontent among workers revealed by the poll numbers, Reuters also conducted interviews with dozens of workers and found that they are particularly angry at Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax cut, which they believe is mostly rewarding “corporations and wealthy people.”

As Common Dreams has reported, that is precisely what’s happening, with massive Wall Street banks and major corporations raking in record-breaking profits while workers report seeing little to no gain from the tax law.

Jesse Oberbroeckling, a 37-year-old John Deere factory worker from Iowa, told Reuters he has “buyer’s remorse” over his vote for Trump and said he plans to back the Democrat challenging Rep. Rod Blum (R-Iowa) in the upcoming midterm elections.

“Trump is for the rich,” Oberbroeckling said. “Blum’s for big business. They said they were for the workers, but they’re not.”

Retired mechanic and Teamster member Ken Jones echoed Oberbroeckling’s dissatisfaction with Trump, arguing that he has reneged on his promises to help the working class.

“Now I see he’s not going to do anything,” Jones told Reuters. “The working man don’t get nothing out of it. I never voted Republican until Trump, and it was the worst mistake I ever made.”



Originally published by Common Dreams under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license.