IUPAT General President Jimmy Williams Jr. Slams Trump for Illegal Firing of NLRB Board Chair Gwynne Wilcox
Press Releases
Hanover, MD — International Union of Painters and Allied Trades General President Jimmy Williams, Jr. released the following statement in response to President Donald Trump’s illegal firing of National Labor Relations Board Chair Gwynne Wilcox.
“Members of our union and workers across the country rely on the NLRB to oversee union elections and to intervene when employers break the law in the workplace. The unprecedented and illegal firing of Chair Wilcox means that the NLRB will not be able to decide cases, leaving workers who have had their rights violated in limbo, waiting indefinitely for justice.
Let this also be a lesson for the Democratic Party, who had the opportunity to secure a Democratic-majority on the NLRB and instead squandered it. We need a true opposition party that isn’t afraid to go toe-to-toe with anti-union forces in this country, and whose number one priority is to stand up for working people.
Trump campaigned on caring about the American worker, and yet he illegally fired Chair Wilcox, bringing the NLRB’s work to a screeching halt. If the President wants to work with the IUPAT and the rest of the labor movement to represent our members’ interests, we’ll be there to support him. But if workers are backed into a corner, we will exercise our rights to take protected, concerted action.”
President Williams is not afraid to ask tough questions or to say what he truly believes, no matter who is in the White House. For interest in interviewing or booking President Williams on your program today or this week, please contact Ryan Kekeris at rkekeris@iupat.org, or Mindy Isser at misser@iupat.org.
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The International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) represents a growing community of over 140,000 active and retired craftspeople in the United States and Canada. The IUPAT membership extends far beyond the workplace. Recognized as one of the most active unions in the labor movement, IUPAT members help shape their communities in many ways: through an abiding commitment to service, by fighting passionately for workers’ rights that benefit all working families, and through effective worker education and mobilization.