AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka Tuesday defended presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee Joe Biden's call for making sure American jobs stay in the United States and arguing that even though the jobless rate before the pandemic was at 3.5%, the nation has lost jobs under President Donald Trump, except for in the service sector.
“We’ve lost manufacturing jobs, we lost mining jobs, we’ve lost every set of jobs out there,” Trumka, the president of the more than 12.5 million-member union, told Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo during a heated interview. "So what I said is he talks about it, but his policy doesn’t match it to make it happen. That’s what we have to do, line up the words with the policies.”
Biden, he also said, is working with the AFL-CIO to make sure American jobs remain. Trumka added that the former vice president "has an industrial program to create jobs, an infrastructure program to help create jobs here at home, and so we’ll work with him to make sure that happens."
Bartiromo argued with Trumka that his statements were “not true," pointing out the pre-pandemic numbers.
"Let me push back on what you’re saying," Trumka told her. "The jobs being created weren’t manufacturing jobs, they weren’t mining jobs, they were service jobs that paid lower wages. Yes, we had jobs, but we need to raise the wages of those jobs. That’s why there’s growing inequality in this country."
Trumka also praised Biden as a "working guy" who is from the "working class" and that the AFL-CIO feels "comfortable" that he will protect American jobs.
But Bartiromo pushed back, asking Trumka what Biden did for the unions while he was President Barack Obama's vice president and added that with Trump, jobs have been his "number one issue."
"Yeah, but he lost a lot," Trumka told her. “If you look at where he’s at right now, doesn’t matter, you can say it’s about the pandemic, but he’s lost jobs.”
He also told her that every year, inequality has gotten worse because wages weren't going up "properly" but Bartiromo argued that inequality had begun to "narrow" before the virus.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.