<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/05/08/trump-slammed-this-indiana-factory-on-twitter-union-leaders-say-hes-all-talk/?utm_term=.fb02341dc23f" style="color: rgb(149, 79, 114);" class="">https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/05/08/trump-slammed-this-indiana-factory-on-twitter-union-leaders-say-hes-all-talk/?utm_term=.fb02341dc23f</a><o:p class=""></o:p></div><h1 style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 24pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">Trump slammed this Indiana factory on Twitter. Union leaders say he’s all talk.<o:p class=""></o:p></h1><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span class="pb-byline">By <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/danielle-paquette/" style="color: rgb(149, 79, 114);" class="">Danielle Paquette</a></span> <span class="pb-timestamp">May 8 at 2:11 PM</span><o:p class=""></o:p></div><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class=""><a name="c119fc4e5d" class=""></a>The president was tweeting about his factory again, and Don Zering was tired of it.<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">“Rexnord of Indiana made a deal during the Obama Administration to move to Mexico,” President Trump wrote Sunday evening. “Fired their employees. Tax product big that's sold in U.S.”<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class=""><img apple-inline="yes" id="FF2045B0-DE3D-470E-A262-6C7EDA24551C" height="201" width="425" apple-width="yes" apple-height="yes" src="cid:image001.png@01D2C819.11D70ED0" class=""><o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class=""><o:p class=""> </o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">Zering, the leader of the United Steelworkers unit at Rexnord, said Trump got it half right: The ball bearing manufacturer was laying off its 300 workers in Indianapolis and relocating to Monterrey, Mexico. The company announced those plans in October.<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">But Zering took issue with Trump’s pointed finger. “It’s just a bunch of bulls---,” he said Monday. “All he’s doing is blaming it on Obama. Where was Trump at in the last four or so months when we really needed him?”<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">Back in December, Trump slammed Rexnord on Twitter over its outsourcing plans. “Rexnord of Indiana is moving to Mexico and rather viciously firing all of its 300 workers,” he wrote. “This is happening all over our country. No more!”<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">That was the last they heard from him.<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">“He never did anything about it,” said Zering, who voted for Hillary Clinton. “He didn’t try to stop it.”<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">Chuck Jones, president of the United Steelworkers branch in Indianapolis, met in February with Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb, Pence’s former deputy. Holcomb's team looked into it, he said, and later told him nobody could stop the company from packing up and leaving. (Neither the Trump administration nor Holcomb’s office responded to interview requests.)<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">By Monday, about a third of the 60-year-old plant 's 300 employees had already lost their jobs. Gone were the assembly lines and half the machines. The workers who remained used skeleton equipment to kept making ball bearings. Their last day is June 26.<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">The company unveiled its plans to move in October 2016, about three weeks before Trump won the election. The decision, Rexnord said in a letter to the local union, would help it “operate in a more cost-effective manner.”<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">The workers in Indianapolis earn about $25 an hour, Jones said, while their counterparts in Mexico would be paid about $3 an hour.<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">Brett Voorhies, president of Indiana’s AFL-CIO chapter, questioned Trump’s threat on Sunday to raise taxes on Rexnord imports. Would such a punishment also apply to Carrier, the Indianapolis furnace-maker Trump pledged to save? (The AFL-CIO<a href="https://aflcio.org/2016/6/15/working-people-afl-cio-endorse-hillary-clinton-president" style="color: rgb(149, 79, 114);" class="">endorsed</a> Clinton.)<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">Trump reached a deal in December with Carrier’s leadership — United Technologies chief executive Greg Hayes — to keep about 800 jobs slated for Mexico on American soil in exchange for $7 million in <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/12/06/he-got-up-there-and-lied-his-a-off-carrier-union-leader-on-trumps-big-deal/?utm_term=.d1aa936cffee" style="color: rgb(149, 79, 114);" class="">state tax credits</a>. About 550 production jobs, however, are still getting shuttled south of the border. Those layoffs start in August. <o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">“I don’t see anything that he can possibly do at this point,” Voorhies said, “other than pump his chest out.”<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">Mike Millsap, a United Steelworkers representative who oversees workers in Indiana and Illinois, said Rexnord’s move marks a broken promise.<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">“Under his administration, Trump said, no more plants were going to Mexico,” Millsap said. “But people are losing their jobs as we speak. Rexnord’s going under his watch. Carrier, too.”<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">Five months after Trump first bashed Rexnord, it’s unclear what triggered him to tweet again. CNN’s Brian Stelter suggested the president might have caught an NBC Nightly News segment on Rexnord’s imminent move:<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class=""><img apple-inline="yes" id="A71AAF04-3500-400C-9214-0361F855DE25" height="215" width="452" apple-width="yes" apple-height="yes" src="cid:image002.png@01D2C819.11D70ED0" class=""></p></body></html>