To be honest, I was relieved when the relatively reactionary national Teamsters Brotherhood didn’t endorse in the presidential election. They claimed in some phony-baloney poll that most of their members prefer Trump and I bet they were considering a MAGA nomination. Union president Sean O’Brien spoke at the Republican National Convention and I imagine he was calculating how badly the union would have been torn up if he did what he really wanted to do.
Meanwhile, though, battleground state affiliates have started endorsing Kamala campaign and pledging on-the-ground support. On Friday, John Nichols reported that “Harris received so many endorsements from Teamsters joint councils and union locals in states across the country that her campaign is now touting endorsements of the Democrat from units representing more than one million of the labor organization’s 1.3 million members. And they’ve gotten a boost from James Hoffa, who led the union for decades as its general president. Hoffa ripped into the current leadership, calling the failure to back the Democratic ticket this year ‘a critical error and, frankly, a failure of leadership by Sean O’Brien.’”
In August, the Teamsters National Black Caucus took the rare step of issuing a formal statement backing the Democrats because of their “unwavering commitment to workers and their families.” The caucus argued that “Their records reflect a deep dedication to advancing labor rights and supporting working-class Americans.” Prominent regional leaders across the country delivered similar messages, with Josh Zivalich, the influential president of Teamsters Local 769 in South Florida, arguing in an August letter to O’Brien—which was sent after O’Brien’s appearance at the Republican National Convention—that, “Vice President Harris has proved herself to us, especially in that she cast the deciding vote on the multi-employer pension relief bill, saving the pensions of hundreds of thousands of Teamsters as you well know.”
In contrast, Trump is seeking the presidency as “one of the most anti-union, anti-worker politicians in history,” wrote Zivalich, who explained, “The problem is not that Trump is a Republican, the problem is he is Anti-Union. Trump’s Administration appointed an anti-Union Chair of the NLRB [National Labor Relations Board] and countless other attacks on worker’s rights, including recently praising Elon Musk for union-busting activities—and you are also well aware of that. Why is this endorsement even a question? It shouldn’t be–and nearly every Local Union Leader in the Country knows it.”
…[A]fter the international stood down, Teamsters joint councils and locals across the country rushed to endorse Harris and Walz. On Wednesday night, the “Teamsters Against Trump” movement asked: “How do you spell momentum? In the last 8 hours, joint councils representing nearly half a million Teamsters endorsed Harris.” By mid-day Thursday the union uprising had gone national, with Harris’s campaign announcing that she had— in barely a day— gained the backing of regional joint councils and local unions representing roughly one million Teamsters. “These local Teamsters have committed to immediately begin knocking doors and engaging in other voter contact efforts across the battlegrounds, noted the campaign, which distributed a list of endorsers that spanned the United States,” announced the Harris camp, which listed endorsements from the Teamster Retirees organization and the Teamsters National Black Caucus, along with support from joint councils in Michigan, Wisconsin, southern Nevada, northern Nevada, western Pennsylvania and northern West Virginia, Washington and Alaska and Idaho, Minnesota and Iowa and North Dakota and South Dakota and western Wisconsin, Illinois and Missouri, as well as major locals in Philadelphia, Boston, Miami, and New York.
Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Pennsylvania are among the most hotly contested battleground states of the 2024 presidential race. Having the support of Teamster joint councils, which are composed of multiple union locals and have substantial resources, provides a major boost for the Harris-Walz ticket— especially when that support is this enthusiastic. Hailing Harris’ work to save union pensions as vice president in “the most pro-union administration ever,” Wisconsin’s Joint Council 39 declared, “As President, Kamala Harris will build on those efforts and work with Congress to pass the PRO Act, ending some of the most egregious union busting tactics once and for all. In contrast, Donald Trump tried to gut workers’ rights as President by appointing union busters to the NLRB and advocating for (an anti-labor) national right-to-work (law). Trump’s project 2025 would go even further, attacking the ability for unions to even have the ability to organize.”
“This November,” announced the joint council, which represents 15,000 Teamsters in a battleground state where four of the past six presidential elections have been decided by under 25,000 votes, “we will work with millions of union workers across the country to defeat Donald Trump once again, and to send Vice President Harris and Governor Walz to the White House.” In western Pennsylvania, Carl Bailey, the president of the 35,000-member Teamsters Joint Council 40, echoed that fervent desire to defeat Trump, saying, “I don’t think he cares about working people. He used to brag about having people fired. My job is to keep people from being fired.”
Such statements are in stark contrast to the muddled message that’s been sent by the union’s national leadership— and they point to the bottom-line reality that has emerged from a chaotic week of speculation about where Harris stands with the Teamsters in particular, and with organized labor in general: While O’Brien and the union leadership in DC “has chosen to take a seat on the sidelines,” as Hoffa puts it, Teamster units across the United States are in the game— pulling for the Democratic presidential ticket, as well Senate candidates, in critical battleground states.
That doesn’t mean that Harris is going to get all the votes of Teamsters in those states– or nationally. Like most unions, the Teamsters have plenty of Republican members. What is going to happen, however, is that Kamala Harris is going to get hundreds of thousands of Teamster voters— and that some of the most dynamic union organizing on Harris’s behalf, in the states that matter most, will be done by Teamsters union locals and joint councils that are working in solidarity wth the broader labor movement.
Florida’s Josh Zivalich, whose Local 769 gave a strong endorsement to Harris this week, summed up the sentiments of the union members who have chosen to engage on behalf of the Democrats by saying, “There has never been a more obvious choice for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in a U.S. presidential race.”
Worth mentioning that CEOs at the 350 largest American companies saw their compensation surge by 1,085% from 1978 to 2023, compared with only a 24% increase for typical worker pay, not even close to keeping up with inflation. Workers saw a 19.52% decrease in purchasing power over that period while these CEOs saw an increase of their purchasing power over 1,000%!
In the U.S. CEOs make between 290 and 399 times more than their average employee. That grotesque disparity is a lot more than it is in other countries:
Canada- 191:1
Netherlands- 171:1
UK- 144:1
Australia- 132:1
Germany- 136:1
France- 109:1
Italy- 80:1
Japan- 67:1
Sweden- 60:1
China- between 55 and 100:1
Plenty of work for unions— and politicians who want to earn their support going forward— need to do. At this point it might be worth taking a look at what Señor Trumpanzee has promised to do on day one of his fantasy second term— the dictator day. The Washington Post counted “41 distinct day one promises for voters— and union presidents— to consider. These are the 4 he’s mentioned the most frequently:
Trump has promised, on day one, to cut funds to schools that teach what he has described as“critical race theory” and “transgender insanity.”
He has mentioned starting the “largest deporation operation in American history.”
Trump has vowed to “repeal Biden’s electric vehicle mandate.”
He has also repeatedly promised to “keep men out of women’s sports.”
As for Trump’s health care plan for Term Two, Jonathan Chait wrote it is to let insurers charge more for preexisting conditions. (That was the “concept of a plan” he mentioned at the debate.) On Meet the Press, Trump’s weirdo running mate advocated for “a partial or complete return to the system that existed before Obamacare. In that world, prior to 2014, it was very difficult to find affordable coverage unless you were on Medicare, Medicaid, or got insurance through your employer. There was a market for individual insurance, and it was possible to buy plans if you didn’t get coverage through a government plan or through work. But that market was dominated by ‘adverse selection’— the only way insurers could make money was to weed out any customers likely to need medical care. Cheap plans could be sold to people who were young and healthy. Oftentimes, those plans denied coverage for any preexisting condition, or had hidden limits on the amount the insurer would have to pay, so if you got very sick, you would discover you faced ruinous costs not covered by your insurance.”
“Vance,” wrote Chait, “tries to pitch this idea in the friendliest possible way, but the idea is unmistakable. Vance explains that Trump wants to: ‘implement a deregulatory agenda so that people can pick a health care plan that fits them. Think about it: a young American doesn’t have the same health care needs as a 65-year-old American. And a 65-year-old American in good health has much different health care needs than a 65-year-old American with a chronic condition. We want to make sure everybody is covered, but the best way to do that is to actually promote more choice in our health-care system and not have a one-size-fits all approach that puts a lot of the same people into the same insurance pools, into the same risk pools, that actually makes it harder for people to make the right choices for their families.’ Vance is correct that young people have different needs than old people, and healthy people have different needs than sick people, and putting them all in the same risk pool means charging young people more than they would otherwise pay. (Again, insurers can currently charge old customers up to three times the rate they charge the young— Vance thinks they should be able to charge the old even more.) What he doesn’t tell the audience is that allowing insurers to give cheaper plans to the young and healthy means letting them charge more— much, much more— to people who aren’t young and healthy. Perhaps some people have a member of their family who has an expensive medical condition. Those people would be unable to obtain decent coverage, as was the case before Obamacare.”