Rexnord workers caught in Trump vs. union war of words

MILWAUKEE — In John Feltner’s opinion, maybe it’s not the best idea for a union to get caught up in a nasty war of words with the next president of the United States.

Feltner, a machinist at a Rexnord Corp. (RXN) factory in Indianapolis, is also a vice president with Steelworkers Local 1999, which represents workers at Rexnord as well as at a nearby Carrier Corp. plant. Both plants have announced plans to move jobs from Indianapolis to Mexico.

On Wednesday, Local 1999 President Chuck Jones criticized President-elect Donald Trump for taking credit for preventing about 1,350 jobs at the Carrier facility from leaving; the number of jobs retained actually was closer to 750.

“He got up there and lied his a-- off,” Jones told The Washington Post.

Trump fired back on Twitter, saying that Jones had done a “terrible job” representing workers and that the union should “spend more time working.” Earlier, Trump had criticized Rexnord for its plan, saying the company was “rather viciously firing all of its 300 workers.”

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The harsh exchanges probably did little good for the workers at Rexnord — a Milwaukee-based company that makes industrial bearings, gears and other products — who still held out hope that Trump could help persuade it to keep its Indianapolis plant open, Feltner said.

"People were asking, ‘What the hell is Jones doing?’ It stirred up a lot of emotion in the plant,” said Feltner.

“This is my opinion on it, and my opinion only,” he said. “But these are our jobs, and when you have local (union) leadership and the president-elect playing politics, who is going to lose? We are. We need to step away from politics and focus on the task at hand, which is keeping the spotlight on Carrier and Rexnord jobs and every American job. That’s our concern.”

Rexnord declined to comment. Feltner said supervisors from the company’s Mexico plant have been touring the Indianapolis plant, and the company wants its workers to train their replacements in return for severance packages.

“If that’s not a slap in the face, I don’t know what is,” Feltner said, adding that the plant is expected to close in 2017.

“Right now, the jobs are slated to move to Mexico. What we are in negotiations for is to try and finalize severance packages. Those talks are going very slow,” he said.

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Feltner said he was told the move to Mexico would save Rexnord $15 million a year.

The company, which has about 7,700 employees, had $67.5 million in profit on $1.9 billion in sales in fiscal 2016. The average wage at the Indianapolis plant is about $25 per hour.

Now, the spat between Trump and Jones has left Local 1999 members, many of them Trump supporters, in an awkward place.

“Do we have mixed feelings? Yeah, we are ecstatic for the people whose jobs (at Carrier) are being saved, but we are angry about the jobs that are leaving. Those are people we represent, too," Feltner said.

In the deal that Trump and Indiana Gov. Mike Pence — the vice president-elect — helped negotiate with Carrier, the Indiana Economic Development Corp. offered the company up to $5 million in conditional tax credits, $1 million in training grants and $1 million in tax credits for continued investments in the Indianapolis plant.

A 'zero sum' game

The practice of offering tax credits and other perks as incentives for companies to add or retain jobs in a state is widespread.

Critics, though, say it puts government in the position of picking winners and losers in the private sector.

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“Tax credits are the government putting their finger on the scale,” said Jenni Dye, research director for One Wisconsin Now, a liberal public policy group in Madison.

It’s also a “zero sum” game, Dye said, with states and countries stealing jobs from each other in lieu of creating new jobs.

“That’s why we’ve got to have leadership on a higher level, than just state leadership, coming together. If everyone jointly decides that we are not going to play this game anymore, we will get back to a more level playing field,” Dye said.

Follow Rick Barrett on Twitter: @rbarrettJS

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