UNI GS on Trump: ‘he’s drained the swamp to make space for the yachts’
UNI Global Union General Secretary Philip Jennings told CNN’s Isa Soares on Quest Means Business that President-elect Trump was draining the swamp of Washington politics but only to make way for the yachts of his billionaire accomplices. This was a reference to Trump’s election promise to get rid of self-serving politics-as-usual in Washington. Jennings made the point that Trump was cynically replacing these politics with a billionaire boys’ club in his administration. He said that he was also concerned at the number of anti-union right wing appointments Trump was making to his cabinet.
“I am worried that with some of the people surrounding him, that we are going to feel more oppression, suppression of the worker voice and their union organizations. It looks like he is already walking back from some of those campaign promises that he would come with a fresh view.”
Jennings said that it was clear that Trump’s successful campaign was partly due to the failure of the Washington political elite to understand what was happening in their own backyard but that Trump was using this for his own ends.
“What Trump did understand during the campaign, was that sense of the American worker being left behind, the sense of being dispossessed, the sense that this system is not working for them.
“The global-polling we have done shows that the political class is not speaking for people at work, not responding to their hopes and ambitions for their families. Trump is making a similar mistake by surround himself with billionaires who come from another part of our economic culture, who don’t come from the factory or shop floor in most cases.
“The message seems to be that was the campaign now I’m in government and I’m taking care of the insiders and the wealthy and that worries me in terms of trickle down, who is going to win from these tax breaks? Answer, the people who he is surrounding himself with.”
“I want Donald Trump to talk to the American labour movement to begin a conversation about investment to change the business model: how much has the American business community spent on share buy backs and on dividends? In some cases it has outpaced their net income, it dwarfs their levels of investment and R & D.
“To make America great again, make America pay great again. We want to see an economic empowerment of working people and their unions,” Jennings concluded.
Watch the whole interview here: http://snpy.tv/2gy5h2f