http://www.epi.org/blog/heed-union-leaders-truth-telling-on-trumpcarrier-deal-and-judge-on-policy-not-theatrics/
Last week I argued that the Trump-brokered deal with Carrier industries to keep 700 jobs in Indiana shouldn't be treated as a triumph, but instead as a sellout of those unlucky workers who hadn't managed to make themselves useful as PR props for Trump. And yesterday somebody with actual credibility on this—Chuck Jones, a union leader who represents the Carrier employees—buttressed this argument.
One key point here is pretty simple: "doing deals" company-by-company, rather than instituting good policy rules across-the-board, will do nothing for American workers except pit them against each other. The Trump administration's effectiveness in helping American workers should be judged on policy, not theatrics.
The biggest reason why this is true is that deals don't scale-up against a recovering economy. A quick example: in the first quarter of 2009 (the first three months of President Obama's presidency) 2.5 million workers were laid-off. In the most recent three months, 1.5 million workers were laid-off. What does this tell us?
First, that even in normal economic times, there is a ton of churn in the economy. Why do these 700 workers go to the front of the line in getting help from Trump while the other 1.4993 million are left on their own? An ironic note here is pointed out by Harold Meyerson: Trump never would have even heard of the planned Carrier move without the union (and Chuck Jones).
-- via my feedly newsfeed
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