The Republican often hits the Carrier Corporation for failing Americans, but many workers find him unconvincing – even as some denounce Clinton on trade

Soon after the Carrier Corporation announced in February that it planned to close its 1,400-employee plant here and move operations to Mexico, Donald Trump lashed out at the company for betraying the US and its workers.



On Monday, he was at it again. Only five minutes into his first debate with rival Hillary Clinton, Trump had cited Carrier as an example of the “jobs fleeing this country”. “So many hundreds and hundreds of companies are doing this,” he said in his latest attempt to blame trade deals for the US’s industrial decline.



Carrier, whose founder, Willis Carrier, invented the modern air conditioner, has been in Indiana since the 1950s. The job losses, which will come over the next three years, are expected to cost the state $108m a year and lead to many more job losses in related businesses. But they will save the company a fortune. Most of its Indianapolis workers make about $26 an hour. Their Mexican replacements make $3 an hour.

Unfortunately for Trump, notwithstanding his repeated attacks against Carrier and the fact that his running mate Mike Pence is the state’s governor, workers at the company’s sprawling Indianapolis factory voice little support for the Republican nominee. That should be scant solace for Clinton, however, because Carrier workers also voice little enthusiasm for her – largely because she backed the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) when her husband, while president, persuaded the Senate to approve it.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest United steel workers from Local 1999 protest against the closure of their factory in Indianapolis. United Technologies, which owns the Carrier plant, is moving production to Mexico. Photograph: United Steel Workers

“Trump talks a big game about Carrier, but I don’t support him,” said TJ Bray, an assembly line worker for 14 years at Carrier’s furnace factory here. “I’m pleased that he bashed Carrier, but knowing who Trump is, I don’t put a lot of stock in what he says. It’s hard to take him seriously about trade when he outsources so much of what he makes from China and other countries.”

Three days after Carrier’s president announced the plant closing to hundreds of workers – a video of their angry reaction to his talk went viral – Trump laid into Carrier, and then proceeded to rail against it week after week. Trump said he would slap a 35% tax on every air conditioner it makes in Mexico.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Carrier workers react with anger to news of their plant’s closure.

“You’re going to bring it across the border and we’re going to charge you a 35% tax,” Trump said in a speech in Indianapolis in April. “Now, within 24 hours, they’re going to call back. ‘Mr President, we’ve decided to stay. We’re coming back to Indianapolis.’”

Bray, a 32-year-old father of two, said: “Trump claims Carrier is his baby, but he still says we make air conditioners here. That’s wrong. He doesn’t even know we make furnaces here.”

But Bray doesn’t like Hillary Clinton either. “I can’t support her,” he said. “For one, her husband was the guy who got Congress to approve Nafta in the 90s, and we’re against that. And then she at first supported TPP (the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-country trade deal) but now that she’s running for president, she’s against it. You can’t trust her.”

The Carrier workers’ union local, Local 1999 of the United Steelworkers, endorsed Bernie Sanders during the primaries. It has declined to support Clinton. Its parent union, with 860,000 members, has officially endorsed Clinton.

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“A lot of us stood behind Bernie because we know his ideals on trade and because he’s labor-friendly,” said Frank Staples, an 11-year Carrier worker who is a group leader in quality control testing.

Staples, 37, grudgingly supports Clinton. “At this point, the lesser of two evils is Hillary Clinton,” he said. “It’s not that she’s evil, but she supported Nafta. I’m not happy with either one of them, but I have to go with the one who I think will be in the best interests of workers, and that’s Hillary. Bernie has been sending a pro-worker message for 30 years. Hillary doesn’t come across nearly as well as Bernie in that regard.”

Staples then laid into the New York billionaire: “I can’t support Trump. He’s a racist. He’s a bigot. He says he’s going to save the Carrier jobs, but I don’t see how he’s going to do that.”

Manufacturing is vital to Indiana’s economy and jobs have come back since the recession. Some 572,000 people were employed in manufacturing jobs in the state in January 2006. That dropped to 425,000 in June 2009. Employment is now back to over 515,000, but the trend is declining. Carrier’s parent company, United Technologies, is cutting 700 jobs at another of its company’s plants in the state and, again, moving the operation to Mexico.

Indiana lost many manufacturing jobs in the recession but has been recovering them Indiana lost many manufacturing jobs in the recession but has been recovering them

When a top Carrier official, Chris Nelson, announced the closing in February, he said Carrier would not begin laying off workers until 2017 and would not entirely close the operation until 2019.

Nelson said the company was moving the operation to Mexico to “remain competitive and protect the business for the long term”. “Relocating our operations to Monterrey,” he said, “will allow us to maintain high levels of quality, competitive prices and serve the extremely price-sensitive marketplace.”

Even with all this lead time before getting laid off, Staples, the father of two boys, 11 and seven years old, worries that he won’t find a job that pays nearly as well as his current $24.03-an-hour Carrier job. “I’ve looked into several other manufacturing jobs – they all want to pay $13, $14, $15 an hour. That’s about half what I make now,” he said. Staples has been hoping to buy a new house in a neighborhood with better schools, but the pending layoff could sabotage that plan.

Chuck Jones, president of the steelworkers local here, was enraged by Carrier’s decision, noting that Carrier’s parent company, United Technologies, had record profits of $7.6bn last year. “It’s not that we produced a bad product or the company wasn’t profitable,” Jones said. “It’s because they’re greedy sons of bitches who want to make more money. They don’t care a rat’s ass about the 1,400 people they employ and don’t care how their lives turn out.”

Jones said Local 1999’s members weren’t excited about the presidential candidates. “Some people are going to support Trump because they want something different,” he said. To many Carrier workers, Jones said, Trump’s choice of Indiana’s governor, Mike Pence, as his running mate was a strike against him. “Pence did nothing as governor to help the Carrier workers,” Jones said. He noted that many workers further soured on Trump when his financial disclosure forms noted that he owned United Technologies stock.

Inside Sully’s, a popular bar across from the Carrier plant, David Parliament, a Carrier worker for three decades, said he favored Trump over Clinton because “he’s not a politician, he’s a businessman”. He called Clinton “a complete politician”. Parliament added, however, that it was hardly worth voting because it’s so clear that Indiana will go Republican this year.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Carrier workers are worried by Hillary Clinton’s former support for trade agreements including Nafta. Photograph: Jim Young/Reuters

His drinking buddy, Conrad, a retired supervisor who declined to give his last name, enthusiastically backed Trump. “I think he’ll bring jobs back. I really do. He’s a great businessman who should be smart on our economy.”

In the parking lot outside, Ernest Duncan, an African American Carrier worker, said he hadn’t made up his mind, but might back Trump, even though he said he was troubled some things Trump had said on race. “Whoever wins, there’s still going to be a lot of racism in the country,” Duncan said. “America has been racist forever.”

At the moment, Duncan seemed most worried about the plant closure. “There are 1,400 people here who will need jobs,” he said. “Donald Trump has created jobs, and he has the ability to create jobs.”

But Shertaryn Scruggs, a four-year Carrier worker, disagreed, saying she favored Clinton. “I just think she’d be good,” Scruggs said. “I feel she got a lot of experience with her husband as president.”

Marvin Douglas, 37 years old and with Carrier for three years, said Trump was a fraud. “Trump doesn’t know anything about the issues,” Douglas said. “He’s bankrupted four companies. Hillary has never bankrupted a company. Hillary’s all right with me. She has a lot of experience. With Trump, I think, show me what you can do. That’s better than what you tell me you can do.”