A strike on the eve of the New York primary by 40,000 unionized Verizon workers in the northeast poses a dilemma for Donald Trump. | Getty Trump holds tongue on Verizon strike

A strike on the eve of the New York primary by 40,000 unionized Verizon workers underscores a contradiction in Donald Trump's candidacy.

On the one hand, Trump has been saying he can make America great again by curbing the corporate practice of laying off U.S. workers and sending their jobs overseas. “When I’m president,” Trump pledged Tuesday in Pittsburgh, “guess what? Steel is coming back to Pittsburgh.”


But on the other hand, Trump has not answered queries from POLITICO or any others about whether he supports the Verizon workers striking in his own back yard over Verizon’s plans to offshore its call centers.

“Outsourcing is central ... to the strike,” Bob Master, an official at the Communications Workers of America District 1 in the Northeast, said, "because the entire strike is about trying to preserve good jobs in our communities.” The strike began 6 a.m. Wednesday and, and CWA started flagging that it was coming several weeks ago.

Trump frequently echoes that anti-outsourcing sentiment. But throughout his campaign, he’s kept labor unions, the most persistent opponents of outsourcing, at arm's length.

Before the Nevada caucuses, Trump ignored pleadings by the Culinary Workers union to recognize their union at a Trump hotel in Las Vegas. He seldom mentions unions on Twitter or in public speeches.

Trump declined this past summer to submit a candidate questionnaire to the AFL-CIO or to appear before its executive council. Granted, there was virtually no chance the AFL-CIO — which has yet to make an endorsement — would endorse a Republican for president. But Mike Huckabee filled out the questionnaire and met with the executive council, noting that about one-third of all union members voted Republican. (Trump has however, called on the Teamsters, a relatively conservative union that does not belong to the AFL-CIO, to endorse him.)

On some issues, Trump's positions are diametrically opposed to labor's policy agenda. In February, he told the South Carolina Radio Network shortly before that state's primary, "I love the right to work. ... You are not paying the big fees to the unions. The unions get big fees."

Trump has also opposed any increase to the minimum wage even as the union-backed Fight For $15 presses for a $15 hourly minimum. Indeed, in November, Trump said at a presidential debate, "Wages [are] too high; we're not going to be able to compete against the world."

And Trump has floated labor’s arch-nemesis, Scott Walker, as a potential vice president. On Tuesday, he appointed Walker’s former campaign manager, Rick Wiley, to be political director. Wiley worked for the anti-union Koch Brothers network in 2008.

“Trump’s rhetoric has tapped into the very real and very justified anger of everyday people,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will tell the IBEW Friday, according to prepared remarks. “But here are the facts: Trump loves right to work. He routinely mistreats workers at his own companies. He cheered Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s attacks on teachers and nurses.”

Where Trump differs from other Republican contenders is that he avoids opportunities to bash unions. In the South Carolina interview, he said he could "live with unions in certain locations," and last year, he told Newsweek’s Matthew Cooper that he had “great relationships with unions,” in part, because “New York is mostly unionized.” In the South Carolina interview, he said, "People in unions, they seem to really want to vote for me" in spite of his support for right to work laws. Many union leaders, including the CWA’s Chris Shelton, have said Trump ranks fairly high in rank-and-file endorsement polls. (CWA eventually opted for Bernie Sanders).

Trump's chief rival, Ted Cruz, thundered Wednesday that Trump's supporters were "acting like union boss thugs" in their treatment of convention delegates, a statement clearly intended to knock not only any misbehavior by Trump's campaign but also Trump's purported affinity for labor unions.

But Trump's tolerance for unions appears to stop well short of supporting the Verizon strike — a position that differs markedly from those of Democratic contenders Sanders and Hillary Clinton.

Sanders, who has long stood with CWA-represented Verizon workers, joined the picket line in Brooklyn on Monday, saying it was unacceptable that Verizon wanted to “take American jobs — call center jobs — out of this country and bring them abroad.”

Clinton in 2013 accepted $225,000 from Verizon to give a speech, but even so, she met with Verizon strikers on 42nd street on Wednesday and criticized the company. "We should be doing all we can to keep good-paying jobs with real job security in New York," she said in a statement. "Instead, Verizon wants to outsource more and more jobs."

Trump's silence on the Verizon strike may earn him catcalls about inconsistency, but it seems unlikely to affect the outcome of Tuesday's primary. Recent polls show Trump winning the state by about 30 percentage points.

Ben Schreckinger and Ken Vogel contributed to this report.