This year’s Republican National Convention featured a number of strange guests. Among them were former reality-TV star Amber Rose, the CEO of a bean company, a gaggle of North Carolina frat boys, and a portly English Bulldog. But the most surprising speaker was a short, stout, bald man with a thick Boston accent who could’ve blended seamlessly into the crowd, were he not invited to speak to them from the stage: Sean O’Brien, the general president of the 1.3-million-member-strong International Brotherhood of Teamsters, addressing the RNC on July 15.
It was an awfully tough crowd for a pro-union speaker. It’s extremely unusual to see an American union president appear at any high-profile Republican event, let alone the party’s nominating convention. The GOP’s aversion to labor unions, pro-worker policies, and anything that even hints at holding anti-union corporations accountable is deep-rooted and well-documented.
Deafening Silence
It seems ridiculous to waste time speaking to such an audience, yet O’Brien gladly accepted the invitation. He has long insisted that he and the Teamsters he represents are not beholden to either party, and doubled down on that stance during his speech. Predictably, the union leader’s remarks did not seem to resonate with the heavily conservative audience, who found little in them to applaud.
The silence was deafening when the union leader decried weak labor laws and corporate greed, but the crowd perked up when he pivoted to gushing over Trump himself, whose “toughness” he praised. While his appearance was hailed by some pundits as a savvy move to cut through political polarization (or snuggle up to a potential Trump administration), the majority of the reactions from within the labor movement were overwhelmingly negative.
His appearance received sharp criticism from a number of other union leaders, including Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, who reminded O’Brien that “Donald Trump and JD Vance are on the bosses’ side.” Reactions on social media have, of course, been far spicier and featured words like “scab” and “traitor.”
A surprising right turn
An unruffled O’Brien continued to kick the hornet’s nest the next day by approvingly tweeting about an article in which Missouri Senator Josh Hawley portrayed trans workers and overall diversity as a weakening agent for labor. It’s unclear what qualifications Hawley, a banker’s son with two Ivy League law degrees, has that would allow him to make such sweeping (and false) statements about the working class, but O’Brien apparently saw something he liked. With that in mind, the Teamsters’ recent move to affiliate with the Amazon Labor Union—who, it must be said, boast an extremely diverse membership—is difficult to square (and some ALU members are decidedly unimpressed with O’Brien’s new pals).
The backlash only intensified from there. An especially sharp critique came from a wholly unexpected source: the Teamsters own Twitter account. In a quickly deleted post, an anonymous person with access to the Teamsters account reminded O’Brien that, “unions gain nothing from endorsing the racist, misogynistic, and anti-trans policies of the far right . . . You don’t unite a diverse working class by scoffing at its diversity.”
The Teamsters leader’s turn toward the right isn’t unprecedented—the Teamsters endorsed both Richard Nixon and George H. W. Bush for president—but it’s still a bit surprising. O’Brien last made headlines by engaging in a heated exchange with Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin during a hearing, culminating in the Republican lawmaker challenging the union president to a physical fight (O’Brien declined, to the chagrin of those who’d have loved to see a wealthy small business owner take on a Boston Teamster).
From strike threats to Mar-a-Lago visit
O’Brien was elected to the top job in 2021 as part of the grassroots Teamsters for a Democratic Union reform slate that ousted entrenched Teamsters leadership, and he first won accolades for his tough-talking stance on workers’ rights. A fourth-generation Teamster, O’Brien knows his way around a box truck as well as a boardroom. He’s described himself as a “lifelong Democrat,” and in 2022, appeared alongside Senator Bernie Sanders and AFA-CWA president Sara Nelson at a series of rallies against corporate greed.
During negotiations for the union’s massive new contract with UPS, O’Brien wielded the threat of a strike as a cudgel. After the contract was ratified, it received both plaudits over the contract’s generous scope and criticism from rank-and-file workers who felt it didn’t deliver enough. Earlier this year, the union settled a $2.9 million racial discrimination lawsuit that former Teamsters staffers had brought against O’Brien and the union.
This also isn’t the first time O’Brien has come under fire for seeming to cozy up to Trump and his minions. In January, he met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and took a grinning photo with the former president. Trump was then invited to speak to the union’s executive board.
Several months ago, O’Brien and other Teamsters leaders made headlines by voting to make a $45,000 donation to Trump’s campaign via the union’s political action committee. (It’s worth noting that O’Brien has also made overtures to President Biden and donated the same amount to the current president’s campaign.) The RNC gig is only the latest in a series of moves that have brought the union president closer into Trump’s orbit.
Not everyone in his union is happy about that. Rank-and-file workers have been very vocal online and in interviews, and the Teamsters Mobilize reform caucus (which formed in the wake of the UPS contract’s exclusion of part-time workers) has announced an upcoming membership meeting to discuss next steps. When O’Brien first received the RNC invitation, John Palmer, vice president at-large of the Teamsters, publicly opposed the move in an open letter.
What was the goal?
Whether or not the union’s members will vote to endorse Trump, Biden, or neither, O’Brien’s public embrace of Trump will create a complicated question for the union in the years to come. It’s true that there are a number of conservatives among his own membership, and some may say that his closeness to Trump is merely a reflection of that reality—but there are many liberal and leftist Teamsters, too, and they’re being poorly served by his latest moves.
Sure, it may help his own political aspirations (a Secretary of Labor posting in a Trump administration would be a pretty cushy job, since you wouldn’t be allowed to actually do anything) or come in handy when the next Teamsters general election rolls around, but at what cost? It’s a cold fact that, no matter which box they tick in November, all of his members would suffer under a Trump administration.
O’Brien knows as well as anyone that a Trump win would be utterly disastrous for labor. His administration would immediately start to try to roll back all the progress that’s been made in the past four years; crush unions’ ability to function; destroy workers’ ability to unionize, strike, and bargain effectively; and cause real harm to scores of the most-marginalized union and nonunion workers in the country.
As Palmer wrote in his letter, “It is unconscionable for any labor leader to lend an air of legitimacy to a candidate and a political party, neither of which can be said to have done, or can be expected to do, anything to improve the lives of the workers we are pledged to represent.”