Teamsters Union Endorses No One For President
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is not endorsing anyone for president.
The union’s executive board said Wednesday that it found “no definitive support among members for either party’s nominee,” so it decided not to back either the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, or her GOP opponent, former President Donald Trump.
“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,” the union’s president, Sean O’Brien, said in a statement.
Although the 1.3-million-member union isn’t formally backing anyone, its non-endorsement could be seen as a snub of Harris. After all, organized labor tends to support Democrats, and most of the largest unions quickly got behind Harris’ candidacy when she replaced President Joe Biden atop the Democratic ticket.
The Teamsters also gave Trump a boost by releasing figures showing its members preferred Trump over Harris in recent internal polls ― something the Trump campaign quickly blasted out in a press release.
O’Brien has said the Teamsters would not back Democratic politicians by default, and he angered plenty of members and leaders in his own union by cultivating a relationship with Trump. The Teamsters leader even took the highly unusual step of seeking and then accepting a speaking slot at this summer’s Republican National Convention, praising Trump as “one tough SOB.”
“I refuse to keep doing the same things my predecessors did,” O’Brien said in his speech, at times criticizing both Democrats and Republicans. “Today the Teamsters are here to say we are not beholden to anyone or any party.”
But several local affiliates of the Teamsters, as well as its Black caucus, have come out in support of Harris, saying another Trump presidency would be terrible for unions. Two of the union’s joint councils, representing a combined 300,000 members in California, Hawaii, Nevada and Guam, endorsed Harris on Wednesday right after the executive council announced it’s non-endorsement.
The Republican former president had an undeniably anti-labor record during his first term, when he weakened workplace protections, attacked federal employee unions and made it more difficult for workers to organize. Trump has given no indication that he would break from such policies in a second term.
Meanwhile, many labor historians agree that the Biden-Harris administration has the most pro-union record at least since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Biden has called out corporations for union-busting, walked a picket line in support of strikers, and shaped a highly progressive National Labor Relations Board that’s making it easier to form unions.
The current administration can also take credit for protecting thousands of Teamsters’ retirements through an $86 billion pension rescue that received no Republican support in the Senate.
