How Trump is Offshoring Indiana Jobs

By George Faraday

On Saturday, in the next stop on our 2018 Pickup Tour, Good Jobs Nation will rally with CTS, AT&T, and Honeywell employees in South Bend, Indiana, to hold President Trump accountable for his promises to American workers.

Despite President Trump’s promise to stop offshoring “on day one” of his Presidency, in the almost two years since his inauguration, these three corporations have collectively sent over one thousand American jobs abroad, while raking in billions of dollars in contracts awarded from the Trump administration.

Honeywell International has done particularly well under Trump. This year Honeywell more than doubled its annual revenue from federal contracts to six billion a year, for a total of almost $10 billion under this administration.  During Trump’s presidency Honeywell profits have risen $1.5 billion and revenues are up three billion. Honeywell CEO Darius Adamczyk made almost $17 million last year — 333 times more than his median employee, and the company expects to repatriate seven billion in overseas earnings thanks to the Trump tax cuts.

But none of this stopped Honeywell from locking out 316 of its UAW South Bend workers for ten months after they refused to accept cuts to their healthcare coverage.  According to Honeywell, the workers – who make brake components for military and civil aircraft — were “ignoring the stark economic realities currently facing the global aviation industry.”

At the end of the lockout the workers were forced to accept a contract did not include company health care coverage for retired workers and Honeywell promptly moved to axe health insurance for almost 5,000 retirees, ending a benefit that its employees have relied on for over 50 years.

To add insult to injury, Honeywell has plans to start outsourcing South Bend jobs to Turkey, to add to the over 5,000 U.S. jobs it has sent abroad since the 1990s, while it enriches its shareholders with an eight billion stock buyback plan (which, not incidentally, will likely further boost the value of Adamczyk’s stock options).

Meanwhile working American taxpayers are subsidizing Honeywell’s greed with contracts and tax breaks handed out by President Trump.

That’s why Good Jobs Nation is rallying in South Bend with workers and retirees from Honeywell, CTS and AT&T, for good jobs, an end to offshoring and action from President Trump — not words – to help the working he claims to care about Americans.