The Atlantic

Donald Trump's Loud Silence on Unions

He spoke at a Boeing factory that had just rejected unionization—but didn’t bring it up. He never does.
Source: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Donald Trump traveled to a Boeing plant in South Carolina on Friday, ostensibly to poke around the company’s new jet and sit in the cockpit. But his real interest was the few thousand workers assembled in the hanger, and the television cameras behind them.

“We love our workers, and we are going to protect our workers,” he said. “We are going to fight for our families, and we are going to fight for more jobs and better-paying jobs for the loyal citizens of our country.”

The president’s the bid from the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, out of 2,800 total votes— a pretty big defeat, though not particularly surprising in the labor-unfriendly South.

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