A 55-year-old Ohio woman who has worked for General Motors for over two decades had nothing good to say about President Donald Trump who had appeared at her plant last summer and told workers to hold onto their homes and not worry about losing their jobs.
Speaking with Vox reporter Alexia Fernández Campbell, GM Lordstown plant employee Nanette Senters -- who works assembling car doors -- sobbed while she explained how management broke the news about the job losses, revealing that employees burst into tears.
"At 9:30 in the morning on Monday, we were all called into the break room, and they put on a video saying that the plant would be shuttered in March 2019," Senters recalled adding that the person in the video was a nameless "GM bigwig."
"There was a loud gasp. People started crying," she continued. "All day long, people were crying. Then we just started getting angrier and angrier. We’ve done so much for this company. This is such an inhumane way to treat people."
Asked whom she blamed, Senters focused on President Trump for multiple reasons.
"There’s a lot of blame to go around. I blame a lot of it on our president. I think it all started when Trump repealed the [Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard]," she explained. "The CAFE standard meant that you could produce small cars that are energy-efficient and that would kind of balance out the building of big trucks and gas guzzlers."
"Then there’s his trade wars and his unfinished trade deals, which are hurting the entire country. Ford, Chrysler, Honeywell — they are all outsourcing good union jobs. The jobs being created are not good-paying jobs. They are $12-an-hour jobs," she continued adding that she will be losing a $30 an hour job.
She went on to point out, "We were told that we might be able to transfer to another job, that there will be 3,000 new GM jobs. But that means 11,000 of us will be left out in the cold."
Asked if she had any hope Trump could save her job, Senters scoffed at the notion, saying he had made big promises before.
"All of the president’s rhetoric has divided the workforce horribly. I was here when Trump had a rally here last summer. He said, don’t sell your house, do not worry about that. I am going to bring jobs back," she recalled. "I didn’t believe him. From day one, I could see what he was — the way he managed to give people false hope. A lot of people are still hoping he will save them now. It’s disturbing."
Confronted with jobs that only pay about $12 an hour, Senters explained that her situation is dire and she may have to move.
"I am going to try to transfer to another plant. If that doesn’t work out, I will go back to school. I am a single woman, and if I have to move to Indiana or something, it will be hard to take care of my 84-year-old mother," she explained, before condemning Trump again.
"Trump is not willing to put his money where his mouth is. And so many of my co-workers, around half of them, are still pinning all their hopes on Trump. I hope I’m wrong. I hope he does do something about the thousands of jobs companies are still sending abroad. But he hasn’t done anything about Carrier, Honeywell, or Harley-Davidson," she explained.
"Basically, since he’s been in office, it has been an assault on good-paying jobs. What he’s doing is not translating into anything good for middle-class America," Senters concluded.
You can read the whole interview here.
