The Teamsters President Is Courting Trump—Despite His Anti-Labor Record

Mother Jones; Jeremy Hogan/SOPA Images/Sipa USA/AP; Mike Stewart/AP

Teamsters union general president Sean O’Brien is set to speak at the Republican National Convention next week—the culmination of several months of courting former president Donald Trump despite his anti-labor record. 

With 1.3 million members, the Teamsters are one of largest and most powerful unions in the United States—and its leaders have not yet issued an endorsement in the 2024 presidential race. Representatives have emphasized that O’Brien’s speech at the RNC does not amount to one and that O’Brien also requested to speak at the Democratic National Convention in August. Spokesperson Kara Deniz told Mother Jones that the DNC has not responded to their request. 

Still, O’Brien’s planned visit to the RNC sets the Teamsters apart from other influential labor unions, who have largely rallied behind President Joe Biden’s re-election bid. Biden, who claimed the title of “the most pro-union president in American history,” has already been endorsed by several other major unions, including the AFL-CIO, NEA, and UAW.

Experts say it’s unlikely that the Teamsters’ endorsement—which requires a poll of the general executive board—will go to Trump. Nevertheless, O’Brien’s critics from within the union argue that his appearance at the RNC will set a dangerous precedent at a potential turning point for American labor. Teamsters vice president at-large John Palmer has repeatedly publicly rebuked O’Brien’s involvement with Trump. In a recent op-ed in New Politics, he wrote that O’Brien’s speech at the RNC “only normalizes and makes the most anti-union party and President I’ve seen in my lifetime seem palatable.”

The Trump administration dealt a series of blows to organized labor—the effects of which are still felt today. Yet an NBC poll conducted in January found that, while Biden is still faring better than Trump in union households, his lead is slimmer than it was in 2020. Some pundits say this slip is an indication that Biden is out of touch with the working class. After Biden met with AFL-CIO leaders on Wednesday, FOX Business host Larry Kudlow predicted that cost-of-living increases under Biden will drive rank-and-file members to vote for Trump. “Biden will win the union leaders, but Trump is going to take most of the rank-and-file who go to work every day, play by the rules, work with their hands and proudly wear their hard hats,” he said. “You can bet on that.” 

In January, O’Brien met privately with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, where the two posed for a photo with matching thumbs up. Later that month, the former president sat down with Teamsters leadership and rank-and-file members as part of a series of “presidential roundtables” at the union’s headquarters in Washington, DC. Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Trump teased the possibility of a Teamsters endorsement, despite the union, under O’Brien’s predecessor, endorsing Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020. 

“Stranger things have happened,” Trump said. 

Labor unions are no longer the “behemoth” political forces they were in the 20th century, said David Macdonald, a political science professor at University of Florida. But their endorsement in the presidential race still carries weight and could influence undecided members in key swing states. 

The Teamsters have a history of endorsing Republicans even as the labor movement embraced Democrats. The Teamsters were the only major union to back Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984, and George H.W. Bush in 1988. 

Though Trump touts his support for the American working class, his record is staunchly anti-union. He reshaped the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that enforces labor law and investigates unfair labor practices. Led by a Trump appointee, the NLRB made what the Economic Policy Institute described as an “unprecedented” number of decisions “overturning existing worker protections.” The rulings constrained employees’ ability to form unions, organize at the workplace, and bargain with management.  

Trump’s appointees to the Supreme Court have supported a series of anti-labor rulings. In 2018, the court rejected a legal precedent that allowed public-sector unions to collect mandatory fees from nonmembers to support the cost of collective bargaining—a crucial source of revenue. Earlier this year, the Court sided with Starbucks in a case involving workers fired while they tried to form a union. The decision overturned an NLRB order to reinstate the workers.   

Biden’s progressive appointees to the NLRB included Jennifer Abruzzo, who has been hailed as a champion of worker’s rights. The board has worked to undo decisions made under Trump and, according to an analysis from the think tank Center for American Progress, reinstated more workers in one year than during the entire Trump administration. Additionally, Biden appeared at a UAW picket line in Michigan last year and signaled support for workers unionizing at Amazon in 2022. 

“Biden [has been] arguing that unions are an important part of a healthy democracy and a healthy economy, and urging workers to unionize,” said Joseph McCartin, a professor of labor history at Georgetown. “We haven’t seen that kind of leadership from the White House, arguably, since the New Deal era.” 

Trump, meanwhile, has tried to drive a wedge between union leadership and rank-and-file members over Biden. Last October, while the UAW was on strike, Trump addressed a recorded message to auto workers about Biden’s push for electric vehicles, arguing that union leaders who support Biden do not have workers’ best interests in mind. “And it doesn’t matter how bad they are, they’ll endorse a Democrat,” he said, “even though the Democrat’s selling you down the tubes.” 

O’Brien, weighing the chances of a second Trump presidency, may be making a calculated decision to develop a relationship with Trump. Or he could simply be responding to the significant number of Teamsters members who are Republicans. In a press release about Trump’s visit to Teamster headquarters, O’Brien noted that the union’s members “represent every political background.” Palmer, the union’s vice president, told Mother Jones that straw polls of members showed that around 46 percent supported Biden while around 37 percent supported Trump.

Nelson Lichtenstein, a professor of labor history at University of California, Santa Barbara, said that O’Brien may be hoping to justify an eventual Biden endorsement to his Republican members. Some members found this idea distasteful. “They should not be catering to these Confederates within our union,” said Chris Silvera, secretary-treasurer of a Teamsters unit in Long Island City, New York. 

Richard Hooker, secretary-treasurer of a unit in Philadelphia, told Mother Jones that leadership should instead focus on “aggressively educating” members on how another Trump administration could harm the labor movement. He hopes O’Brien will have a “mic drop” moment at the RNC. If O’Brien doesn’t condemn Trump, Hooker says, the Teamsters need to have “some tough conversations” about how to move forward.