Trump Courts the Teamsters
By Peter Olney
Trump and the mainstream media have been playing up his courting of the Teamsters. But will the powerful union really endorse him? Don’t bet on it.
Sean O’Brien has been driving the Teamsters in a new direction since he led a coalition campaign that included Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) to topple the union’s old guard in 2021.
Last year, O’Brien and TDU teamed up in a grassroots contract campaign at UPS that eliminated two-tier for delivery drivers, ended forced six-day work weeks, increased part-time wages from $15.50 to $23 an hour, and forced UPS to create thousands of more full-time jobs for part-time workers.
Under his leadership, the Teamsters have brought back the strike weapon, used it to win strong contracts, and organize the unorganized – including at DHL, Sysco, and US Foods.
O’Brien hit the stump with Senator Bernie Sanders and Sara Nelson, the president of the Association of Flight Attendants, to denounce white-collar crime syndicates like Amazon. He’s spoken at the TDU Convention and Labor Notes, the biennial conference of the grassroots, troublemaking wing of the labor movement.
So more than a few progressives were left scratching their heads when Trump hosted O’Brien in Mar-a-Lago January 4. Alarm grew when Trump met with Teamster leaders and members at IBT headquarters three weeks later.
Now, headlines are breaking that the union contributed $45,000 to the Republican National Committee. What the hell is going on?
Engaging with Members and the Issues
It’s understandable why Trump is courting the Teamsters. Fake populist, fake friend of the working stiff, is the would-be dictator’s whole brand. Trump landing the endorsement of the 1.2 million Teamsters would be a major coup, and a disaster for Biden who needs labor’s support to win in the Midwest and other swing states.
Could it really be that the Teamsters, who have not backed a Republican for President since mobbed-up leaders endorsed Ronald Reagan and George Bush in the 1980s, are capitulating to MAGA?
Don’t bet on it. But the Teamsters face the harsh reality that approximately half of their members support Trump. And they are not alone among unions in facing this problem. The union I worked for, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), faces a similar challenge of doing politics with a membership where Trump support is surprisingly strong in many locals.
Under the headline, “Biden stakes his reputation on blue-collar workers, turns out they’re Trump voters”, a Bloomberg report using small-donor data documents that, “Mechanics and truck drivers give to Trump, while professors and scientists support Biden.”
This fact is a crisis not just for Biden, but for the entire labor movement. It defies an easy response if the goal is to engage and move more union members away from Trump in a highly polarized and toxic political environment.
Trump and other right-wing populists have been exceptionally effective at using wedge issues to win over white working class voters. Union voters are more likely to vote against Trump than their nonunion counterparts, but union leaders have largely struggled to persuade their members to break with Trump.
In the Teamsters, many members resented the rubber-stamp endorsement of Democratic presidential candidates by former Teamster President James Hoffa, O’Brien’s predecessor and the son of Jimmy Hoffa.
O’Brien is trying something different. The Teamsters are meeting with all presidential candidates. They even sat down with Cornel West, Marianne Williamson, and Robert Kennedy, Jr. Rank-and-file members have been part of each roundtable and Q&A.
Next month, members and Teamster leaders are scheduled to host President Biden.
The IBT donated $45,000 to both the Republican and Democratic convention funds and pledges to have members “on the ground and active in both Conventions.”
In the meantime, members will be polled about their views on union issues like organizing rights, the NLRB, and right to work as well as on more general issues – their responses will be compared with the candidates’ stances.
A more open process could leave some Trump supporters and undecideds in the union’s ranks more open to listening to the Teamsters Union’s statements and endorsements.
Will it work? Who knows?
The Fallout
“Trump’s visit to the IBT was a circus,” one attendee told me. “He didn’t answer a single question or address a single concern. Everything was just a rant about immigration. It was disgusting.”
In the short term, there have been real downsides. Trump, the master pitchman, has effectively played up his Teamster appearances for publicity, leaving some union allies and members bewildered and alienated.
Many Teamsters want no part of Trump and resent their union being part of anything that could further validate or legitimize him.
“Trump’s visit to the IBT was a circus,” one attendee told me. “He didn’t answer a single question or address a single concern. Everything was just a rant about immigration. It was disgusting.”
While the media has played up Trump’s courtship of the Teamsters, Trump himself hardly sounds confident.
Asked at the press conference at the IBT what odds he would put on getting the Teamsters endorsement, Trump stammered, “Well, I don’t know, they never do that, they never give it but I felt, I felt, yeah, we have a good shot, I think.”
Later Trump added: “I don’t know if the top people are going to support me, but within the union I have tremendous support.”
Sadly, Trump’s not entirely wrong about his support in the members and that fact goes a long way toward explaining not just the Teamsters endorsement process but the challenge confronting many union leaders.
Can the Teamsters Help Defeat Trump?
Engineering Biden endorsements is not front of mind for many on the left. In Michigan, progressive and Arab-Americans called for a people to vote “no preference” in the Democratic primary to protest Biden’s capitulation to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.
No one in their right mind wants a Trump victory in November. If and when the Teamsters endorse Biden, it will surprise no one. But what will it take for it to make a meaningful contribution to defeating Trump?
First, the Teamsters endorsement needs to persuade at least some Biden skeptics or soft-Trump supporters in their ranks.
Even more importantly, the union will have to put real money and boots on the ground to work in critical swing states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada.
The Teamsters intervened heavily in the Georgia senate race to help elect Raphael Warnock and Jon Osoff to give Democrats the Senate majority in 2021. That new Senate majority passed the Butch Lewis Act. Named for a Teamster and TDU leader, the act saved the pensions of over 400,000 Teamsters and millions of other workers and their families.
Today, the principal sponsor of the pension relief bill, Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown, will need the support of at least some Trump supporters to win reelection in Ohio, a state that will likely go for Trump in November. The Teamsters will be stumping for Brown. Already an ad aimed at working class voters features Teamster retiree leader Mike Walden crediting Brown for saving truck drivers’ pensions.
Last summer, Democrats were bewildered and furious at Shawn Fain for critical remarks aimed at Biden that they said risked boosting Trump among UAW members. Those concerns are now long-forgotten in the wake of the UAW’s Biden endorsement. Now, it’s the Teamsters turn in the headlines.
Trump has milked his appearances with the Teamsters for photo ops and publicity. That’s unfortunate and unseemly. But don’t miss the signal for the noise.
At the IBT three weeks later, O’Brien followed Trump at the podium and told reporters:
“There’s no question that the Biden administration has been great for unions.”
“Whatever candidate supports our issues is going to get our endorsement,” O’Brien added..
The challenge for the Teamsters and the whole labor movement is to make such endorsements, and the GOTV programs that follow, effective in actually defeating Trump.
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This piece originally ran in Portside
Sean O’Brien is one of the most rotten elements of the Teamsters old-guard. To assume he was ever a reformer is an insult.
TDU’s alliance with O’Brien is one of the greatest betrayals in the history of the militant labor movement.
The UPS contract did not meet any expectations after his pathetic practice pickets.The raises were a meager 17.77% and 78% of the UPS membership in solvent pension funds were sold out and punished with $2.50 in Health and Welfare.
Only 22% of the members from the central and southern states; and the failing New England Teamsters Pension Fund were awarded with $5 in H&W.
So in other words 22% of UPS Teamsters got a $12.50 package while 78% got a $10 package. I’m one of those $10 members that was sold out by O’Brien.
The starting wage was only moved up to $21 and not $23 like you have incorrectly implied. The original proposal was $25, but O’Brien capitulated to management instead.
The horrible contract is resulting in massive layoffs.
As for the newly organized Sysco Foods in 4 localities and DHL Cincinnati, O’Brien failed to win the most important union benefit for those members–a pension.
O’Brien has also waged open war against all opposition and pushed to dissolve and merge opposing locals with those that are friendly to him.
Hoffa Jr was a horrible unionist, but O’Brien who learned from him is a byproduct of the most thugged-up and pro-business friendly unionists America has seen.
Ron Carey is rolling in his grave as I write this comment.
This article does a good job of honestly talking about the unpleasant fact that perhaps half of the Teamster members are Trump supporters. This is not new. The AFL-CIO itself has acknowledged that despite its endorsements, up to 40% of union members have voted Republican in past elections.
Peter describes the O’Brien approach to this problem, which has at its core the idea that to win IBT members against Trump the union and its leadership will have to do more than just give an endorsement to Biden. Giving endorsements and money are what this union and many others have done in the past. It doesn’t move toward solving this problem because it reflects an unwillingness to engage with what workers and union members actually think.
It’s not just elections. Unions have largely abandoned the member education process and structures that were built by the left in the pre-cold war era. O’Brien may use this member-engagement process to chip away at Republican support, but it will take a lot more to change the way hundreds of thousands of Teamsters think.
When Sean Fain said a Biden endorsement wouldn’t be automatic, and would depend on support for making the new electric vehicle production union-friendly, this was a pretty effective demonstration to his own members of the union’s new independence, and he didn’t have to meet with Trump to show it. That could be a lot more effective than O’Brien’s show of “even handedness.”
So a real, permanent program and structure for education (building class consciousness) is one part of an answer. And showing independence in the real world on issues members care deeply about is another. Peter’s article, as well as the book he edited, helps to move that discussion forward.
Great piece Peter. Union democracy is a pain in the ass. It’s not like what so many armchair leftists think. They have no base. They’re responsible to no one. O’Brien is accountable to his members. He’s very wise to initiate a broad democratic process. And you analyzed it sagely.
We have to draw a line:
A reply to Peter Olney
Peter Olney has been one of the most important voices among labor veterans in speaking out about the threat of the Far Right, if not, outright Fascism in the United States. So, I was surprised at the perspective he put forward in his latest article in Portside, Trump Courts the Teamsters, where he applauds the approach of the Teamsters’ General President Sean O’Brien to the presidential campaign.
O’Brien personally met former President Donald Trump for dinner at his Mar-a-Lago estate on the eve of the third anniversary of his attempted presidential coup, and soon after authorized the donation of $45,000 to the Republican National Committee. Trump later met with a select number of Teamsters at the International Headquarters in Washington, D.C., and held a press conference with the Teamster flag prominently displayed in the background.
Peter defended this as a more open endorsement process than in the past presidential elections, and could potentially win Teamster members away from Trump and his horrid political agenda. He wrote:
A more open process could leave some Trump supporters and undecideds in the union’s ranks more open to listening to the Teamsters Union’s statements and endorsements. Will it work? Who knows?
Given my respect for Peter, I found this shocking. “Could it really be that the Teamsters,” Peter asked, “who have not backed a Republican for President since mobbed-up leaders endorsed Ronald Reagan and George Bush in the 1980s are capitulating to MAGA? Don’t bet on it.” I’m not betting on it either, but he appears to be saying, Don’t worry everything is in good hands. But, the Teamsters are not in good hands. The O’Brien’s legal assault on the dissident Teamsterlink social media site is the latest in a disturbing authoritarian trend in the union
Inflating O’Brien’s track record, as Peter does to provide credibility to O’Brien’s dalliance with Trump, doesn’t make us more secure in their leadership but far less. Has O’Brien really “brought back the strike weapon in force” as Peter claims, when the Teamster’s bloviating at UPS appears so hollow after the auto strikes. Why is it so hard for Sean O’Brien to recognize that a convicted rapist, a coup plotter, notorious racist, and a man that has declared that he will be a dictator, and threatens to put opponents in concentration camps should be treated as a pariah?
Instead of undermining Trump, these dangerous liaisons do the opposite, they further legitimize him among far too many in the union’s membership and in the wider working class. We, and I mean the broad left in the U.S., have to argue that the labor movement has to draw a line on Trump and his ilk, while stop relying on the dying carcass of the Democratic Party as a shield or savior from them.