AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler released the following statement on the first presidential debate of the 2024 election:
Tonight, Donald Trump offered the same stale lies in a pathetic attempt to hide the truth that as president, he betrayed workers and families to govern for the wealthy.
Here’s the truth: President Biden is bringing manufacturing jobs home to America, rebuilding our nation’s crumbling infrastructure and standing with working people at every opportunity—including on the picket line. Under the Biden administration, union members are winning record contracts in every part of the country, millions of workers are receiving double-digit raises, worker organizing is surging in every industry and millions of pensions are being saved. If re-elected, President Biden has proven he will continue to take on corporate greed, expand pay raises, create more good union jobs and invest in America.
Donald Trump’s legacy is chaos and division—and his greatest accomplishment in office was a bloated tax giveaway for the wealthy at the expense of working people who make our country run. He oversaw the largest increase in outsourcing in a decade, put a union-busting lawyer in charge of the Department of Labor and blocked workers from receiving the pay we earned. Tonight, Trump said nothing to calm our concerns that he would escalate his anti-worker crusade with the radical far-right’s Project 2025 agenda by eviscerating unions and hard-won contracts; slashing millions of union jobs; blocking workers from organizing; and drastically cutting wages, health care and retirement benefits.
Unions in our country are on the line in this election—and so are union members’ hard-won contracts. It’s simple: A second Trump term is a corporate CEO’s dream and a worker’s nightmare. In November, the more than 12.5 million working people of the AFL-CIO will remember who had our backs.
Contact: Mia Jacobs, 202-637-5018