Trump and Vance Are All Talk, No Leadership on Labor | Opinion

When my dad was around ten years old, my Grandpa Don abruptly pulled to the side of the Center Street bridge in Youngstown, Ohio, and told him to get out of the car. Pointing to the roaring steel mill in front of them, my grandfather said, “Son, if you don’t get your grades up, you’ll be stuck working there forever.”
Ever the rebel, my dad—hypnotized by the glimpses of molten steel and gargantuan cranes through the windows—thought that outcome sounded exciting. After all, union steelworkers were some of the best-paid blue-collar workers in the country. And yet, by the time my dad reached adulthood, he didn’t even have the option. Nearly all the mills in the area had closed, alongside many other businesses that were reliant upon the success of the local steel industry. By the time I was a kid, that mill was a decaying, skeletal husk of its former glory.
In places like my hometown, the promise to “Make America Great Again” holds particular resonance. When Donald Trump visited Youngstown as president, he said what people longed to hear: that his administration would increase their property values and bring back manufacturing jobs. Many residents enthusiastically believed him—in 2016 and 2020, Trump won several counties in northeast Ohio that hadn’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate in decades.
And yet, when GM announced that it would be stopping production at its plant in Lordstown, Ohio—the area’s largest remaining manufacturer—what did Donald Trump do? He took to Twitter to criticize the president of UAW Local 1112, the union representing Lordstown workers. Soon after, the factory closed its doors, putting its 1,600 remaining workers out of a job. All told, between 2017 and 2021, the region’s manufacturing sector shrank by more than 6,000 jobs. Similar stories occurred across many Rust Belt communities during Trump’s tenure as president.
Since taking office, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have actually accomplished many of Trump’s unfulfilled promises, in addition to quite a few good promises of their own. The Biden-Harris administration has not only achieved Trump’s failed promise of a bipartisan infrastructure law, but also multiple other major pieces of legislation that are, among other things, investing in clean energy production and building a domestic supply of economically critical semiconductors. Northeast Ohio is already seeing the effects of these investments; within two weeks of President Biden signing the Inflation Reduction Act into law, GM started production on a new electric vehicle plant in Lordstown, which is expected to bring around 2,200 jobs back to the area.
In rust belt communities like Youngstown, the legacy of organized labor—including the efforts of union workers, including steelworkers, that led to the 40-hour work week, overtime pay, and protections from hazardous working conditions—is just as important as that of the local manufacturers. And just as there is a clear difference between the accomplishments of the Trump-Pence administration and the Biden-Harris administration when it comes to investing in American manufacturing, there is an equally apparent distinction in their records of supporting workers and organized labor.
As president, Donald Trump—despite positioning himself as the savior of the working class—appointed management-side lawyers to the National Labor Relations Board who, according to many union members and leaders, made it far more difficult to organize and negotiate in their workplaces. Meanwhile, JD Vance—Ohio’s junior senator—is on record opposing the PRO Act, legislation that would address loopholes in labor law and expand protections for workers seeking to unionize. Instead, Vance has advocated for replacing unions with “employee involvement organizations” that can be funded and dissolved at will by employers.
In comparison, as vice president, Kamala Harris chaired a White House Task Force on labor that directed the National Labor Relations Board to protect workers’ rights and encourage the expansion of collective bargaining. As governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz—a member of the American Federation of Teachers for decades—signed legislation that expanded sick days, protected against wage theft, and protected unions’ collective bargaining rights.
As the son of two blue-collar Ohioans (a roofer and a restaurant worker), as someone who spent my summers roofing to pay my college tuition, and now as a union member working to platform the voices of everyday citizens in the nation’s capital, these policies related to blue-collar work and organized labor are deeply personal to me and those I care about. That’s why I think it’s important to draw policy distinctions between the politicians who have claimed to serve American workers and the leaders who have delivered for working people when it counts.
Donald Trump and JD Vance have succeeded in convincing a lot of people that they understand the concerns of Rust Belt residents. But to me, their records in office indicate otherwise. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, by contrast, both have proven records of reaching across the aisle, making effective investments in American manufacturing, and supporting the workers who will fill those manufacturing and construction jobs. While, in so many ways, Donald Trump and JD Vance may not be traditional politicians, their actions on economic policy show them to be just a new brand of elites offering all talk and no action for blue-collar America.
Born and raised in northeast Ohio, Don Wolford currently lives in the District of Columbia, where he is an active member of IFPTE Local 70 and serves as Stories Manager at the Center for American Progress and Action Fund.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.