As Election Nears, Teamsters Still Refuse to Endorse Harris

For the first time in three decades, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters announced that it would not endorse a presidential candidate because internal polling showed that a majority of its members supported Donald Trump (60%) over Kamala Harris (34%). The news that one of the largest and most important unions in the country, with 1.3 million members, would withhold its endorsement sent shockwaves through an already deeply contentious political landscape.

The union’s leadership withheld information on how many members were polled, how many responded, and what the survey said. The union’s top leadership seems sympathetic to Trump for reasons they have not articulated other than to tout the value of bipartisanship.

Throwing another wrench in the works, Teamster President Sean O’Brien offered an additional rationale: “Unfortunately, neither major candidate was able to make serious commitments to our union to ensure the interests of working people are always put before Big Business. We sought commitments from both Trump and Harris not to interfere in critical union campaigns or core Teamsters industries – and to honor our members’ right to strike – but were unable to secure those pledges.”

This statement contradicts the “it’s-what-the-members-want” rationale and instead hurls the two parties and their candidates into a space that is oblivious to track records.

The perversity of its bottom line is obvious: a former president with an abysmal record on virtually every issue important to organized labor was deemed equally attractive (or unattractive) as a presidential candidate who served as vice president in an administration with the strongest record on labor issues in recent memory. Not incidentally, Harris cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate that saved the Teamsters’ pension plan. She walked a UAW picket line in 2019.  Harris supports the Pro Act that would promote union organizing; Trump opposes it.

Trump: “It’s a great honor”

The idea that a Harris administration would treat union rights as badly as a second Trump administration is preposterous.

Trump was quick to gloat: “It’s a great honor. They’re not going to endorse the Democrats. That’s a big thing.” A big thing indeed. Harris met with union leaders two days before their decision was announced. She said: “I want your endorsement, but if I don’t get it, I will treat you exactly as if I had gotten your endorsement.”

As a prelude to the decision not to endorse, Teamster president Sean O’Brien spoke at the Republican convention in July and delivered a strong, anti-business speech that did not change the attitudes of MAGA grassroots, much less the billion-dollar megadonors with overpowering influence over Trump. What O’Brien hoped to accomplish is unclear. What he did accomplish was a counterproductive rift within organized labor and especially within his own organization.

The decision was made by the union’s General Executive Board and was immediately repudiated by other unions and by several important Teamster Joint Councils” organized at the local level. Councils representing over a million Teamster members in the battleground states of Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin and in California, Hawaii, and Texas, as well as the union’s National Black Caucus, defied the national leadership and endorsed the Harris/Walz ticket, pledging to campaign for them.

“As vice president of the most pro-union administration ever, Kamala worked with the Teamsters and other union workers to pass the Butch Lewis Act which has saved the pensions of over a million retirees to date,” said Bill Carroll, president of Joint Council 39 in Wisconsin. “This November we will work with millions of union workers across the country to defeat Donald Trump once again.”

C.M. Lewis, president of the Seven Mountains A.F.L.-C.I.O. in central Pennsylvania, attacked O’Brien’s Republican convention speech on social media. “O’Brien wants kinder, gentler, more patriotic bosses, and anyone that thinks he’s preaching class war is a mark. He heaped praise on Trump, a silver spoon-fed caricature of the corporate elite — utterly clownish.”

Democratic strategists have long felt feverish about the party’s loss of white working-class support. The possible rejection of Harris, with its potential racial and gender undertones, stoked those anxieties. Among other problems, key constituencies among the Democratic base are in vehement disagreement with white workers over such sensitive issues as racial justice, immigration, and LGBTQIA+ rights. The loss of the white working class vote in battleground states is concerning, but what to do about it is a far more difficult question.

An argument can be made that the deep polarization of the electorate and the underlying viciousness of MAGA hostility toward the core goals of organized labor should have a far greater effect on the Teamsters national leadership. Unions exist to fight for workplace rights. The fact that individual members like one or another candidate for reasons outside that crucial focus should not distract a union contemplating an endorsement.

Trump’s Labor Record

The Trump labor record is stark.

Trump had two Secretaries of Labor. The first was Alexander Acosta, who stepped down when investigative reporting revealed that as a federal prosecutor, he negotiated a sweetheart deal with sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The second was Eugene Scalia, son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and avid representative of business interests. Trump never appointed a candidate to lead OSHA who was able to win Senate approval.

Neither Secretary issued any major new OSHA standards, and Acosta was initially reluctant to even publicize enforcement actions. Among the “accomplishments” of Scalia’s tenure was effective resistance to the promulgation of health standards to protect workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Scalia also participated in the downsizing of OSHA’s drastically inadequate budget, as Jordan Barab has explained here. The result was shamefully inadequate enforcement of workplace safety requirements and guidance during the pandemic.

By 2019, Trump appointees held the majority of the NLRB’s five seats and voted to overturn an earlier ruling that mandated quick elections when a sufficient number of workers expressed interest in forming a union. Biden appointees reversed that decision.

Public employee unions represent half the federal government’s civilian workforce of 2.1 million people. Soon after he was inaugurated, Trump signed executive orders that curtailed the ability of federal union representatives to help workers with grievances and complaints.

Just before he left office, Trump issued an executive order using Schedule F legal authority to summarily fire civil servants perceived as disloyal to his presidency. President Biden cancelled that executive order, but Trump’s blueprint for a second term, known as Project 2025, has set the grandiose goal of firing as many as 50,000 civil servants and replacing them with specially vetted Trump candidates. High level policy advisers to the campaign claim that they have a data base of 20,000 Trump supporters seeking federal jobs.

Last but not least, Trump’s bromance with Elon Musk, who is a sworn enemy of unions and workers’ rights, should have troubled the Teamster leadership more than it apparently did. Indeed, the United Auto Workers has sued Trump and Musk for comments applauding the illegal practice of firing employees who threaten to strike.

The Teamsters’ major initiative these days is organizing Amazon drivers. The campaign was given a great lift when the Biden NLRB ruled that, under certain circumstances, Amazon is a joint employer of delivery drivers and is on the hook for compliance with labor laws along with the supposedly independent companies that hire drivers. This ruling is unlikely to stick in a second Trump administration.

In the end, the question might well come down to whether the Teamsters are too big to fail, as its leadership seems to think, no matter who is elected president. The orchestration of the union’s refusal to endorse the Democratic ticket was elaborate and cunning. Once the poll of the membership was taken, a ready-made excuse for stepping back was created.

Yet the extensive press coverage did not identify meaningful internal debate that focused on Trump’s labor record, nor any effort to educate union members about it. Instead, O’Brien’s appearance at the Republican convention demonstrated deep interest in currying favor with the most mercurial candidate to occupy the office in modern times. Anyone who cares about labor rights will all end up gravely disappointed if it turns out O’Brien was snookered.