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President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday blasted a steelworkers union leader who denounced him for exaggerating the number of jobs saved at a Carrier Corp. factory in Indiana.

On Twitter, Mr. Trump said Chuck Jones, who heads the United Steelworkers local at the Carrier plant, had done "a terrible job representing workers. No wonder companies flee country!"

In an interview Wednesday night, Mr. Jones acknowledged he has received threats since the Trump tweets, but said they "don't bother me a whole hell of a lot."

The union leader said Mr. Trump had overstated the job savings of the deal between Carrier and the Indiana governor's office still run by Vice President-elect Mike Pence. Mr. Jones said Mr. Trump raised the hopes of some workers who will nonetheless see their jobs shipped to Mexico.

The spat is a stark reversal from a week ago when Mr. Trump flew to Indianapolis to tour the factory and show that he had made good on a campaign promise to stop United Technologies Corp. from moving the Carrier plant to Mexico.

At that event, Mr. Trump said the deal between Carrier and the state would keep more than 1,000 jobs in Indiana. The company confirmed it would retain only 730 union jobs and another 70 nonunion positions at Carrier's gas furnace and fan coil plant in Indianapolis, Mr. Jones said. Some 550 of his members' jobs would be sent to Mexico.

Roughly 300 jobs touted as part of Mr. Trump's deal to save jobs in Indiana had never been slated to move to Mexico. The company will receive $7 million in tax breaks over 10 years as part of the agreement.

Mr. Jones called Mr. Trump's claim of more than 1,000 jobs preserved in Indiana "an out-and-out falsehood."

"I'm not naive enough to think he's going to be a friend to the working class people," Mr. Jones said, while adding that he was "grateful" that some jobs were preserved.

In a second tweet Wednesday night, Mr. Trump said the union should reduce membership dues and "spend more time working-less time talking."

"If United Steelworkers 1999 was any good, they would have kept those jobs in Indiana," Mr. Trump wrote.

The Carrier fight highlights a split between union leaders like Mr. Jones—who has previously opposed politicians like Messrs. Trump and Pence—and some union workers in industrial states who backed the Trump campaign.

Officials from Local 1999 have previously said members were excited at Trump's promise to intervene in the plant closing. But saving all the jobs at stake, let alone repeating the effort with other companies, was beyond Mr. Trump, Mr. Jones said.

"Our people in that facility got full of hopes they were going to be able to have a job," Mr. Jones said.

Write to Ted Mann at ted.mann@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 07, 2016 23:45 ET (04:45 GMT)

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