The RNC does the Teamsters

On Monday, July 15, 2024, International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) General President Sean O’Brien delivered a speech to the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee: “It’s an honor to be the first Teamster in our 121 year history to address the Republican National Convention.” O’Brien’s speech went on for more than seventeen minutes, broadcast on national television. (In today’s terms, that’s forty Tik Toks.) Most speakers were only afforded two to three minutes.

O’Brien used his time at the podium largely for three ends: ingratiate himself and the Teamsters to the right; drum up nationalistic fervor; and speak to “American” workers’ issues and corporate greed. He began the speech by attacking the criticism of his appearance, “The Left called me a traitor,” (pauses for boos from convention). He goes on to salute Donald Trump (who he refers to only as “President Trump” throughout the speech), “President Trump had the backbone to open the doors to this Republican Convention…he has proven to be one tough S.O.B.”

O’Brien continues through a roll call of Republicans that he recognizes on behalf of the Teamsters: Nixon, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush.

Over the past forty years, the Republican Party has really pursued strong relationships with organized labor…In my administration, the Teamsters reached out to eight Republican Senators over our fight for paid sick leave. Josh Hawley was one of them… (Pause for applause)…I want to recognize Senator Hawley for his direct, relentless, and pointed questioning of corporate talking heads, lawyers, CEOs, and apologists.

This, of course, is purely fantasy. The AFL-CIO political scorecard shows that the average Senate Republican votes for pro-labor legislation 3 percent of the time. Missouri Senator Hawley — a proto-fascist and self-described ‘Christian Nationalist”—holds a zero percent record for 2023, while Senator J.D. Vance distinguishes himself with a zero percent lifetime score and his introduction of legislation to legalize company unions.

The parts of O’Brien’s speech where he raised the threat of Amazon’s labor practices, compared the Chamber of Commerce to a union for business, or laws that prevent workers from ever attaining a union contract, were met with silence from the Republican delegates. To bring it home, he linked his worker advocacy back to national supremacy: “What could be more important to the security of our nation than a long term investment in the American worker?”

Immediately after the speech, O’Brien’s closest supporters rallied to defend his appearance at the RNC. Dan Campbell, a partisan of Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), wrote to Labor Notes: “The sad reality is that many Teamsters and other union members already buy Trump’s populist persona and rhetoric. It’s our job to engage with them.” The suggestion here is that O’Brien and the Teamsters don’t buy into MAGA politics, and speaking at the RNC only used the opportunity to reach more workers that labor normally would not reach.

O’Brien did his part to quickly stomp out the ambiguity when he retweeted an article by Senator Hawley in the red-brown publication Compact entitled “The Promise of Pro-Labor Conservatism.” Hawley writes, “The C-suite long ago sold out the United States, shuttering factories in the homeland and gutting American jobs, while using the profits to push diversity, equity, and inclusion and the religion of the trans flag.” O’Brien shared the article with the caption, “@HawleyMO is 100% on point.” Chris Fuentes, National President of the Teamsters LGBTQ+ Caucus, publicly supported O’Brien’s appearance at the RNC but later sent an email questioning the support of Hawley’s piece. O’Brien backpedaled unconvincingly, “My resharing of the article was meant to further highlight the call for bipartisan labor reform and was in no way intended to support negative criticism of social issues.” (O’Brien must have taken some C-Suite HR classes.)

A rogue IBT staffer posted from the Teamsters twitter account, “Unions gain nothing from endorsing the racist, misogynistic, and anti-trans politics of the far right, no matter how much people like Senator Hawley attempt to tether such bigotry to a cynical pro-labor message. The message this sends to Teamsters of color, Teamster women, and LGBTQ Teamsters is that they are not welcome in the union unless they surrender their identity to a new kind of anti-woke unionism. You don’t unite a diverse working class by scoffing at its diversity.”

More recently, anti-genocide protests erupted in DC over a state visit by Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. Some burned U.S.flags; others tagged pro-Hamas slogans on monuments. Democratic Presidential candidate Kamala Harris wrote a statement denouncing the protests. O’Brien went to twitter posting an image of an American flag, “Always will defend…Never Disrespect…Never desecrate…#usagainsteverybody”

The labor movement’s reaction to O’Brien has been overwhelmingly negative. The Real News titled their coverage, “Everybody Hates Sean.” Labor Notes’ Alexandra Bradbury wrote an opinion piece, “O’Brien’s speech played into Republicans’ Phony Pro-Worker Rebrand”. John Palmer, a Teamsters Vice President who has announced his intent to run against O’Brien in 2026, wrote,

A speaking engagement at the Republican National Convention by Teamsters President Sean O’Brien, regardless of the message, only normalizes and makes the most anti-union party and president I’ve seen in my lifetime seem palatable.

One rank and file Teamster expressed the common sense among many sympathetic to the speech: “…he kind of Trojan horse’d in there and dropped a labor speech on primetime TV in front of millions of viewers…he had to play the game, but when…for the last two thirds of the speech, he dropped some shit, he dropped some stuff people needed to hear.”

One event, many interpretations. Was O’Brien duped? Is he a visionary reaching out across the aisle where others have been too scared to do it? Or a cunning fox who outwitted the RNC on behalf of workers? Everyone wants an answer to rationalize the actions of a top union official that has been hailed as a leading reformer and militant. In truth, right-wing politics are consistent with O’Brien’s record, and the RNC was the logical next step of the path he’s been on for some time.

The record pre-2021

O’Brien has been part of the IBT’s International Executive Board (IEB) since 2011, when he was elected as part of the Hoffa-Hall slate (“the Old Guard”). O’Brien was elected the principal officer of Local 25 in Boston, a Local that Boston Magazine describes as a pariah of the area labor movement: “The union had ties to Whitey Bulger’s Winter Hill Gang; one of its former presidents spent time behind bars; its rank-and-file members have been convicted of crimes ranging from armed truck robbery to embezzlement.” Teamster historian Joe Allen notes,

O’Brien ran for local office in 2006 on …a “conservative pitch.” “We needed to go back to our old-school values,” O’Brien exclaimed. “Go back to what made us successful.” “Old-school values” is a loaded phrase in Teamster politics, harkening back to the days of mob control and violence with a heavy dose of nostalgia for a “strong leader.”

O’Brien’s national reputation had been characterized by thuggish behavior of threatening members (leading to his suspension in 2013); racist and sexist extortion of the Top Chef crew in Boston in 2014 (“We’re gonna bash that pretty face in, you fucking whore”, one Local 25 member said to Padma Lakshmi) to which O’Brien’s #2, Mark Harrington, pled guilty; and harassment of union dissidents at IBT Conventions in 2011 and 2016, which led to charges that were ultimately dismissed. In 2018, O’Brien’s Local 25 endorsed Massachusetts Republican Gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker. This all sounds very much like the O’Brien we saw at the RNC.

It wasn’t until late 2018 that O’Brien’s image was rehabilitated, thanks, in no small part, to Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU). In 2016, Fred Zuckerman came within a few thousand votes of unseating James R. Hoffa for IBT General President, winning the Central and Southern regions. Teamsters United’s slate won roughly half the seats on the IEB. TDU largely ran the campaign out of its offices: one phone rang for TDU, and the next one rang for Teamsters United. TDU was ready for a repeat election in 2021, with fresh enthusiasm after coming so close to victory.

The twist came when Zuckerman announced that he had agreed for Sean O’Brien to lead the slate this time as OZ Teamsters United, with Zuckerman in the number two position. TDU in turn pushed for early endorsement of O’Brien in November 2019, two years before the election, and got to work presenting O’Brien as a key fighter for UPS workers and a champion of reform. It worked. O’Brien won two thirds of the vote, carrying the East, Central, and South regions.

For many, their first introduction to O’Brien was through the Teamsters United campaign, leading to their great surprise at his appearance at the RNC. Those familiar with his record were more sober. Tom Leedham, former TDU candidate for IBT General President between 1997 and 2006, explained, “There is no reform candidate in this [2021] election. People say this is the reform slate with TDU. There’s essentially five candidates [on the Teamsters United slate] that proudly carry a TDU moniker. Two of them will be in non-voting positions.” The other twenty candidates were far from reformers. The election between Vairma-Teamster Power and OZ Teamsters United was not a rerun of 2016 “reformers vs. Hoffa”; it was two wings of the Old Guard contesting for power. The surprise is that O’Brien was the right wing.

A “New Era” Begins

O’Brien, Zuckerman, and the rest of the Teamsters United slate were seated in January 2022. The IBT has carefully cultivated an image of O’Brien in particular as a tough-talking militant. The Teamsters have paid more than a million dollars annually to New York Public Relations firm BerlinRosen, according to federal LM-2 reports. This has produced a veritable factory of instagram infographics, twitter posts, and personal identification of the union with O’Brien.

OZ Teamsters United’s key promise was to strike United Parcel Service (UPS). O’Brien made this the centerpiece of his campaign and early administration, promising, “UPS will be the example.” TDU enthusiastically promoted O’Brien and Teamsters United as the fighting progressive slate, almost single-mindedly in pursuit of a new UPS strike campaign in 2023. TDU in turn used its influence over the Democratic Socialists of America to get DSA to adopt the same position and promote Teamsters United and the IBT through its “strike ready” campaign. O’Brien’s image was boosted as a progressive labor leader through the DSA campaign, and a rally in the summer of 2022 with Senator Bernie Sanders and American Flight Attendants (AFA-CWA) President Sara Nelson, “The Working Class Fighting Back Against Corporate Greed”. Labor journalists largely saluted O’Brien and repeated the mantra of progressive union reform.

All of this obscured the “New Teamsters” record in power. The 2022 Carhaulers negotiations maintained the secrecy that Teamsters United pledged to end; most members never saw the agreement they were asked to vote on. The Costco “Master Agreement” was celebrated, with few details on what it contained – most of Costco is still unorganized.

In the summer of 2022, the rail unions (“United Rail Unions’ Coordinated Bargaining Coalition”) and the railroad companies (“National Carriers’ Conference”) negotiations broke down as the Carriers’ Conference refused to make concessions on the unions’ key demand of sick days. As I wrote at the time,

…the companies refused to move on sick days (railroaders get zero sick days currently) and the negotiations started to break down. President Biden used his power under the RLA to force a 60-day “cooling off period” before the dispute escalated, creating the potential for a strike. Biden then assembled a Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) to mediate and make a recommendation to the negotiating parties. That process did not end with any additional sick days. The Teamsters, to whom the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division (BMWED) and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers & Trainmen (BLET) are affiliated, issued a statement celebrating the intervention of Biden and the PEB…

After another cooling off period, the unions began voting on the contract in November. The unions vote separately. Two of the larger unions were the last to vote earlier last week, resulting in four unions voting down the deal, and ultimately the majority of rank-and-file workers did not accept it.

O’Brien worked closely with the Biden administration throughout the rail dispute. O’Brien and then-Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh had connections through Boston’s labor movement and politics, leading to many meetings on rail and later UPS. The OZ leadership endorsed the PEB’s recommended contract (without sick days). Members of course voted it down and Congress imposed the agreement.  At the BLET convention, O’Brien then urged members to stay united and keep their complaints internal, suggesting that public criticism makes “us our own worst enemy.”

This brings us to the UPS contract campaign in 2023. Though the first year of the Teamsters “new era” did not produce much in the way of militancy or organizing victories, the promise of the battle to come covered for O’Brien’s leadership. O’Brien had been promising to strike UPS since 2018, and had won many accolades for this posture. And while the labor press accepted that the Teamsters would strike UPS as an article of faith, the business press was far more sober. Noam Schreiber for the New York Times wrote,

Still, for all his pugilistic statements, Mr. O’Brien remains an establishment figure who appears to prefer reaching a deal to going on strike, and he has subtly acted to make one less likely. Earlier in the negotiations, Mr. O’Brien had said that UPS employees wouldn’t work beyond Aug. 1 without a ratified contract, and that the two sides needed to reach a deal by July 5 to give members a chance to approve it in time. But last weekend he said UPS employees would continue working on Aug. 1 as long as the two sides had reached a tentative deal.

The Teamsters tightly controlled the negotiations at UPS, requiring legal non-disclosure agreement from its bargaining committee, agreeing to supplements early in the contract to avoid disruptions, and ensuring that the demand for a $25 minimum wage was suppressed. Tom Leedham and Dan La Botz, longtime Teamster activists, wrote:

After the contract had been negotiated in secret, O’Brien hired Berlin Rosen, a top public relations firm to handle the marketing campaign to sell the contract to the members. The union spent a tidy $1.2 million with Berlin Rosen in 2023, most of it to get the job done at UPS with a massive PR barrage. Again, a far cry from a democratic process of discussion and debate of the contract’s terms.

The promised strike never materialized. The IBT celebrated a “historic contract” that left many wondering if an opportunity was lost.

New controversies have arisen since. The IBT agreed to settle a racial discrimination lawsuit for $2.9 million after O’Brien fired numerous Black and Latino staff organizers from the International Organizing Department. “I approved it because of the financial liability. I believe had it gone to court it would have cost our members a lot more,” said John Palmer, a Teamsters executive board member. “I’m extremely disappointed.”

The IBT hired union-busting law firm Nixon-Peabody to shut down TeamsterLink, a website forum hosted by Tom Leedham and Tim Sylvester, former Teamster Local Union presidents and TDU-adjacent reformers. In February 2024, TeamsterLink received a cease and desist for use of the Teamster logo and had their website domain shut down, according to Leedham. The website has been rebranded as “T-unionLink” in order to continue its operations. The website deliberately allows anonymous posting in recognition of the retaliation within the Teamsters union, and has taken up the watchdog duties that TDU had previously been famous for. And in June 2024, HuffPost reported that the Teamsters had ended a no-raid agreement with the International Association of Machinists (IAM).

After the UPS contract was ratified, O’Brien began his current tour on the right. On November 2, 2023, O’Brien met Senator  Hawley, and invited Hawley to tour the Teamsters Headquarters. Hawley had voted down the imposition of the rail contract the year before, using the opportunity to promote the right as pro-worker conservatives. Days later, on November 7, 2023, he met with Ohio Senator JD Vance.  This followed the 2022 endorsement of Ohio Republican Governor Mike DeWine, with the Teamsters claiming victory upon his reelection.

These political moves set the stage for O’Brien’s meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and ultimately his invitation to speak at the RNC. Joe Allen, reporting on the Teamsters and the far right, commented, “This presents, at best, a confusing picture to many people of the political direction of the union, and at worst, lends credibility to the people who should be clearly treated as political pariahs. All Hawley and Vance have to offer the Teamsters—which is two-thirds African-American and Latino—is hate, racism, and bigotry.” The Teamsters followed this up with a $45,000 donation to the Republican National Convention and $5,000 to Hawley. The IBT made sure to announce the funds to the Federal Elections Commission, months before the information would have become public through campaign finance reporting.

What we see is that the “progressive” Teamsters image was an opportunistic maneuver  to win control of the union, and never reflected the actual objectives or values of O’Brien or his administration. O’Brien has consistently looked for a way to reconcile conservative white identitarian politics with trade unionism, going back to Local 25’s endorsements of Republicans in Massachusetts, cover for racist antics of his members, and the machismo of his pugilistic antics.

The reality is that since taking power, the Teamsters under OZ have not been at the forefront of militancy or democracy. They have instead been the leaders of a politics of self-interest and against solidarity. It represents something new and dangerous in the political moment.

There are signs that Teamster Local Union officials are pushing back against the right-wing turn. This is tricky: it’s a fine line between rejecting Trump and embracing the Democratic Party tout court. A reorientation to the politics of solidarity must come from the mass of workers who prioritize the workplace struggle, build connections with the struggles of other workers, reject racism and xenophobia, and press for their own demands independent of the political ambitions of officials and politicians.

Featured Image credit: Henri Charles Guérard; modified by Tempest.

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