Trump’s Teamster Flirtation Complicates Republican Labor Stance
(Bloomberg) -- When Teamsters chief Sean O’Brien called Donald Trump “one tough S.O.B.” on Monday night, the former president beamed and his supporters cheered.
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But the rest of O’Brien’s address to the Republican National Convention — the first of its kind by a head of the storied American union — laid bare the ideological challenges facing the party of big business as it embraces populism and recasts itself as the defender of the American worker.
O’Brien’s convention speech was an unusually overt hint from an American labor leader that his union’s 1.3 million members were open to supporting the Republican presidential nominee — and even that a formal endorsement could be in play.
But it also doubled as an exhortation to union membership and a denunciation of corporate greed – messages that are still anathema to large swaths of the Republican Party and the well-heeled donors who provide its financial backing even as it tilts with Trump toward populism.
“It’s only when Americans band together in democratic unions that we win real improvements on wages, benefits, and working conditions,” O’Brien said, criticizing private equity firms, corporate behemoths like Amazon.com Inc., the US Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable.
“The biggest recipients of welfare in this country are corporations, and this is real corruption,” O’Brien said. “We must put workers first.”
The Teamsters have endorsed Republicans before, O’Brien noted, including Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
“But over the last 40 years, the Republican Party has rarely pursued strong relationships with organized labor,” he said. “There are some in the party who stand in active opposition to labor unions. This, too, must change.”
More than a decade removed from a candidate who famously declared that “corporations are people,” Republicans in the convention hall reacted coolly to some of O’Brien’s most pointed lines denouncing “economic terrorism” against workers.
‘Kind of Cringing’
A day later, Republican leaders and delegates were trying to square the circle, confident the party is peeling off voters from Democrats with populist appeals, while resistant to fully embracing some of the practical implications of O’Brien’s position — particularly the push for more widespread unionization.
“There were parts of the speech last night where I’m kind of cringing, but it’s the dialogue,” said Michigan Republican Party Chair Pete Hoekstra in an interview with Bloomberg News. “It’s the discussion. The whole thing about growing and keeping businesses in America, that resonates.”
Where O’Brien criticized Amazon, Hoekstra took aim at one of his home state’s corporate icons: General Motors Co.
“It used to be the phrase was, what’s good for GM is good for America,” he said. “It’s not true anymore. What’s good for GM is good for GM, but it may or may not be good for Americans.”
President Joe Biden’s campaign is dismissive of Trump’s appeals to labor unions. Biden was endorsed for reelection by more than 30 unions, campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a written statement, and by joining a group from the United Auto Workers became the first president in modern times to walk a picket line.
The campaign also highlighted its efforts to shore up union pension funds – including for the Teamsters – while criticizing Trump for appointing judges and labor-relations officials hostile to union interests during his term in office.
“Donald Trump does not care about workers or their families – and he never has,” she said. “He only cares about himself and his corporate donor friends.”
Biden won a crucial endorsement in January from the UAW, representing about 400,000 employees.
Some 10% of American workers were represented by labor unions in 2023, or 14.4 million people, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Union Overtures
O’Brien singled out Ohio Senator JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, for praise. Vance has previously said Americans have grown too reliant on cheap labor. But Vance also came to politics following a venture capital career in Silicon Valley, a place notoriously hostile to union labor.
The Teamsters aren’t the only union keeping their options open for Trump.
Following the failed assassination attempt against Trump on Saturday, Harold Daggett, the longtime president of the International Longshoremen’s Association, urged his 85,000 members to pray for Trump and reiterated praise for the former president.
Trump has promised to support the union in fighting automation of cargo terminals at US ports, Daggett said, and also “listened to my concerns about Federal ‘Right To Work’ laws” that ban workers from being forced to pay union dues as a condition of employment.
The union overtures are putting traditional business-minded Republicans in an unusual spot.
“The party is open and a big tent for all,” said Senator Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, a former private equity executive, in an interview with Bloomberg. “Does that mean we’re taking sides in any particular union-corporate confrontation? No, that’s not what it means.”
But Republicans are confident Trump will appeal to union members, regardless of whether labor leaders formally endorse him or his policies.
“I think the hearts and minds of the rank and file have been with us for some time, and it’s growing,” Hagerty said.
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