Aug 30, 2025 By Mike Jones 9 min read

Once solid bastions of Democratic supporters, the unions representing local miners and steelworkers have experienced a seismic shift toward Republicans over the last decade in the era of President Donald Trump.

Greene County Commissioner Blair Zimmerman, who is a lifelong Democrat and was a union coal miner for four decades, saw the shift happening during former President Barack Obama’s second term when his environmental policies began taking a harder stance on coal-fired power plants.

While Obama had great support from local miners in his first election in 2008, Zimmerman saw a change with rank-and-file miners in the mid-2010s that quickly led to active workers backing Trump in 2016. Trump has held onto that support ever since, even as many union retirees still lean Democratic due to pension and health care issues, Zimmerman said.

“When Obama ran the first time, he supported coal. Unions are historically Democrats, or at least that’s what they push,” Zimmerman said. “(Obama) had unbelievable support, but he wavered (in the second term) and was ‘going green’ and he lost a lot of votes with the mine workers and the other industries, like the steel industry. … When he changed his tune – that we need to get away from coal and go green – he lost support and that gave Trump an unbelievable injection.”

But just because Trump has maintained that strong support from miners working in Greene County, Zimmerman doesn’t think he’s necessarily delivered on his promises nearly a decade ago to bring back the ailing coal industry. Dana Mining’s 4 West Mine near Mt. Morris closed in early 2018 near the beginning of Trump’s first term in office, and union membership has plummeted in recent decades, with Cumberland Mine near Waynesburg the last remaining union coal mine in Greene and Washington counties.

“Everybody has bought into Trump. He said what the coal miners wanted to hear,” said Zimmerman, who worked at Cumberland for 36 years and has been an active United Mine Workers of American member for more than 50 years. “But has he brought back coal and coal-powered plants? We haven’t seen that. But he thinks he’s the savior of coal and labor, which shocks the hell out of me. He’s said the right stuff. He can say what he wants, and they’ll buy into it.”

While Zimmerman doesn’t think the president has delivered on his promises, steelworker Brian Pavlack of Elizabeth has been a staunch Trump ally for the past decade, having voted for him the past three elections despite previously being a longtime Democrat. Pavlack, who has been a steelworker for 25 years and is employed at U.S. Steel’s coke works in Clairton, said it was Trump’s push for tariffs on foreign-made steel that swayed him.

Trump did not push such tariffs as strongly his first time in office, but he has announced a slew of them in the second term, including a 50% tariff on steel coming into the country. Trump made that tariff announcement during his May 30 visit to the Irvin Works plant in West Mifflin to tout U.S. Steel’s partnership with Japanese manufacturer Nippon Steel.

Pavlack, who started the “Steelworkers For Trump” Facebook group last summer and has nearly 3,000 members, spoke at that event and viewed it as a promise kept.

“Trump came in there and said he was going to help the steelworkers with tariffs. Most of (the members) were Democrats, but with their policies and not protecting the steelworkers, we got sick of it,” said Pavlack, who is a member of the United Steelworkers. “Our union endorses Democrats (because) it’s just past practices. They’ve always endorsed Democrats. They always think the Democrats are for the working class. But I don’t see that no more. They left us.”

The third-generation steelworker thinks the shift to Republicans began happening before Trump was elected, but the union leadership has been slow to follow the direction that rank-and-file members are heading.

“I think it was flowing before (2016), but when Trump came in there he had a voice for us. It always seemed like the Democrats took our vote for granted – all working class – not just steelworkers,” Pavlack said, although he admitted that the union shift might be more specific to manufacturing rather than other jobs in the medical and education fields. “I think it’s the industry, their (environmental) policies and stuff like that. It seems like (Democratic) policies, it’s hard for our industries to do good.”

Not every steelworker is as disillusioned by Democrats. Jojo Burgess, who serves as Washington’s mayor and is employed alongside Pavlack at the Clairton Coke Works, was a staunch supporter of former President Joe Biden and still looks at Trump with reservations.

“Donald Trump does a lot of things that are perceived as good. He learned how to cater to those individuals who talked to him and seek him out,” Burgess said, adding that other political matters could also be at play. “But nine times out of 10, the people who are with him aren’t because of the labor unions. It’s about someone else.”

That doesn’t mean Burgess doesn’t think the United Steelworkers union hasn’t strayed from their core mission of championing workers’ rights. He said focusing on social issues in the past few years may have alienated some members and pushed them to the right, so Burgess would like to see the union push harder on kitchen table issues that affect their members directly while on the job.

“We have gotten away from staying in our lane and taking care of workers and doing what’s best for labor,” Burgess said. “We’ve allowed the waters to get muddied with other social issues. I’m not saying those social issues aren’t important, but we have to take care of us. We have to get back to our core foundation (of) taking care of working class people.”

Even as support from labor unions that specialize in manufacturing moves toward Trump, there are some grumblings about a few of his recent policy decisions in the first few months of his second term. While easing or even obliterating environmental regulations that affect coal and steel production have been popular with union members, deep cuts to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, and the Mine Safety and Health Administration, known as MSHA, have raised alarm bells.

Chuck Knisell, who is vice president of UMWA International District 2 based in Uniontown, said those cuts overseeing mine safety have been concerning, along with the lack of a quorum for the National Labor Relations Board that have effectively blocked any major union rulings from coming down since the body cannot convene to meet.

“This is what’s going through their heads. I’ve heard different things,” Knisell said of some of the union miners he represents. “They’re upset about the dismantling of the labor board, but I don’t know if that has pulled them away from a particular party or not. … There are a lot more issues than just (federal Environmental Protection Agency) regulations or protections for the use of coal. There are a lot more issues that are pretty broad.”

Zimmerman agreed and went further to say those regulatory cuts could be problematic for safety, which would obviously be a concern for miners.

“Whether they’re a Trumper or not, they’re concerned because they know at the end of the day … if they have issues, MSHA and NIOSH are the watch dogs. Cutting back on them, union guys realize we need them.”

Knisell understands the majority of his members are likely conservative since they believe Republican policies skew in favor of coal mining, but he admits there has been “a little bit of a shift of the mood” following the cuts to NIOSH and MSHA that are designed to protect workers. Still, Knisell doesn’t think those decisions are drastic enough to change anyone’s political opinions.

“We’re going through something right now. We’ll see what it’s like in three months, six months or a year, but there is something happening,” he said. “I don’t think there is a point where they say I’m sorry I voted for Donald Trump. We’re going through something as a whole for a country.”

Pavlack doesn’t think the political mood will shift drastically any time soon for the steelworkers, although he’s concerned about what might happen with U.S. Steel’s partnership with Nippon should a Democratic candidate win the presidency in 2028. If that happens, he knows the policy pendulum could swing the other way, although he acknowledged that Democrats would be wise to try and win back working-class voters.

“I think they will stick with Republicans,” Pavlack said of steelworkers. “If a Democrat gets in there, everything Trump did, he did with executive orders and all the policies he put in, they could overturn. I would hope (Democrats) would look at it and say, ‘We need their support and help them out, too.'”

Both Pavlack and Burgess work at the Clairton plant where two died following the Aug. 11 explosion at one of the batteries, so safety and oversight are at the top of their minds right now. Burgess hopes the union can still work to protect employees and try to persuade regulators to make their manufacturing plants as safe as possible.

“We just lost two employees two weeks ago to a tragic accident. You would hope all of these agencies are around to take care of these families and so the truth is given,” Burgess said. “As we’ve seen in the past with this administration, it’s a free-for-all with Big Business.”

While Pavlack acknowledges that he and Burgess could not be more dissimilar with their political views, he thinks there are many common goals they and other union steelmakers have to work for and to resolve.

“I like Jojo. He’s a Democrat and I’m a Republican. But talking to us, we have similar stuff that we want done,” Pavlack said. “There’s some things we agree on.”