AFL-CIO President Faults Trump for Sowing Fear

The following is a condensed and edited interview with Richard Trumka, president, AFL-CIO.

After Ferguson [Mo.] cop Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown, you went to Missouri and gave a speech where you said, “Our brother killed our sister’s son.” Concretely, what did that mean?
It was absolutely true: A police officer was a brother. Brown’s mother was one of our members. Our brother did kill our sister’s son. It was a way of saying, “We need to come back together.” Whether it’s racism, whether it’s homophobia, whether it’s xenophobia, whatever it is, we’re trying to get out in front and bring people together and show that these things are often used as a strategy and a tactic to divide working people.

Why should I try to unionize?
Because you have no power unless you do. When you come together, you have power. You get a more fair share of the pie that you produce.

What did you want to do when you grew up?
I don’t know if I’ll ever grow up. I grew up in a small mining town in southwestern Pennsylvania. Everything was owned by the coal company, except two things: the Catholic Church and the union hall. So both of those were staples of my life. From the time I was 12, I just wanted to be a union lawyer.

You did end up being a union lawyer—and also a miner and president of the mine workers’ union. What did you learn there that shaped how you do this job?
With some real determination and solidarity, we can do some pretty incredible things. We fought Pittston Coal Co., a powerful company that decided they were going to take health care away from pensioners. And we were successful.

Thousands of workers were arrested in civil disobedience. Workers stayed out on strike almost a year, despite injunctions, the threat that fines would bankrupt the union, and the jailing of union leaders. Should unions be taking an approach more like that now?
We were successful in winning. But we didn’t really win alone. We won because we were able to bring the community in and say: “If hundreds of thousands of people lose their health care, it’s going to be bad for your towns and your counties and your schools and your cities and your businesses.” And so the community rallied around us.

We had a strategy of bringing everybody into the fray. We attached ourselves to the community. Should unions be doing that? Absolutely.

When we go back out and we reach our tentacles back out and we become part and parcel of the community and we speak for the community—like we do on immigration, mass incarceration, equal pay for women—when we do that, we’re at our best, and we’re unassailable.

Donald Trump says of Hillary Clinton’s Trans-Pacific Partnership stance, “Here’s how it would go: She would make a small, token change, declare the pact fixed, and ram it through.” Does that concern you?
No, not at all. I think the thing that she did best was she went out and she listened to people. She understood how bad trade has been for them, that we need a new regime. And she said, “That’s what I’m going to do.” We will help her make sure she stays with that stand.

I’ve talked to her. I’ve looked in her eyes. I think I know people pretty well—I’ve made a living doing that. I don’t have any concern that she’s going to double back on us after the election, saying, “I was just kidding.” She’s too good a politician to start off a new administration jettisoning the largest portion of your support that you’re going to need to get things done.