MESSAGE FROM SECRETARY-TREASURER Steven P. Vairma

Steve Vairma's Column:

President doesn't deserve your vote

When Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, thousands of workers throughout the country cast votes for him, believing he would work hard to support them and their families.  That's what he promised during the campaign.

Unfortunately, President Trump's four-year record belies his campaign rhetoric.  Even so, despite his vicious first-term attacks on labor, many working men and women apparently still support him.

We certainly won't argue that these workers don't have the right to support whomever they wish; we have never told our members to vote for any candidate, and we never will.

Our recommendations are based on the candidate's views on labor issues, such as workplace rights, adequate wages, hours of work, working conditions and job safety and health protections.  We never endorse candidates on matters other than bread and butter worker issues.

We didn't endorse President Trump in 2016, for many reasons.  Among them, most important was that he had historically favored so-called right-to-work laws, passage of which would almost immediately reduce wages of American workers.

During the 2016 campaign he privately promised to support a national right-to-work law.

"I like right-to-work; gotta have right-to-work," he told a business group.  Fortunately, with a divided Congress he never got a chance.

Trump was elected in 2016 by voters who wanted the country to be run by a businessman.  They either forgot or didn't know Trump's brand of business - six bankruptcies that eliminated jobs and stiffed creditors.  He's now thought to be 400 million dollars in debt and has paid little or no income tax for many years.

"Cheating, screaming and ripping off workers is Donald Trump tradition that goes back decades" said Robert Weissman, president of a Washington research group, during the lockout of 8,000 federal workers in 2018.

Trump's overblown tax cut gave most of the money to corporations and the wealthiest one percent of the population.

Unemployment  has been at record levels, and our national deficit has passed from millions into trillions.  He promised to bring back all of the factory jobs we've lost to other countries.  He didn't.  Instead, more jobs were moved overseas.

The president also has said those so called "entitlements" that American workers largely pay for - Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid - may be sacrificed to pay down the growing deficit.

Another pledge was that his administration would provide the best health care ever, but instead they seek to cut an estimated 25 million people off Obamacare.

Oh, he said, confidently, Mexico will pay for the wall; no doubt about it.  Not so.  Taxpayers now are footing the bill while Steve Bannon and his buddies are charged with using millions of dollars in wall contributions for their own personal use.

And, of course, while the president fiddles, the death toll of the corona virus has climbed inexorably to more than 200,000 fatalities and counting.

The Teamsters didn't endorse him 2016, and we're certainly not endorsing him in 2020.  We sincerely believe the president has been, is currently and will always be a foe of the American workforce.