Teamster President Sean O’Brien’s Wager: Did He Win?
At the beginning of 2024, Teamster President Sean O’Brien made a wager. He bet that if he flattered and fawned over Donald Trump, the former president would make the union leader his fair-haired boy. So, O’Brien visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago, invited Trump to Teamster headquarters in Washington to meet with union members, and then, breaking with the rest of the labor movement, he spoke at the Republican convention where he praised the billionaire Republican candidate. Once Trump was elected, O’Brien recommended to him that he appoint Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a former Oregon Republican congressperson, to be Secretary of Labor because she had supported the Pro-Act that would make it easier for unions to organize. Trump selected her and O’Brien flew back to Mar-a-Lago to stand for a portrait with the president-elect and Chavez.
O’Brien believes he won his wager. But did he?
Chavez-DeRemer, as far as we know, doesn’t have a great passion fort advancing workers and their unions. She only came out for the Pro-Act it seems because she was running in a swing district that leans toward the Democrats and hope to attract some votes. But her opportunism failed, and she lost anyway. So now, if confirmed, she will be promoted to Secretary of Labor, supposedly to help the Teamsters and other workers. [See update in note. *]
In fact, however, the Secretary of Labor does not actually have much power to protect the Teamsters or to improve the lives of workers. As Secretary, Chavez-DeRemer’s job will be to enforce existing labor laws and to propose new ones, though in the new Trump administration, made up of billionairesand anti-union reactionaries, proposing progressive labor laws will be practically impossible, even if she were so inclined.
Far more important for unions is the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), today a progressive body defending workers right to organize, but tomorrow under Trump’s appointees an anti-union operation. A recent decision by the NLRB chosen by the Biden-Harris administration gave the Teamsters union an important victory, ruling that some 275,000 drivers employed by Delivery Service Partners, or DSPs, so-called “third parties,” are joint employees of DSPS and Amazon and can be organized and represented by the Teamsters. The decision spurred the current organizing drive. But O’Brien supported Trump who will throw out the current NLRB general counsel, appointee and a pro-employer counsel who will throw out previous NLRB decisions and shred pro-labor positions.
Then too there is Trump’s Project 2025, several of whose authors Trump has now selected for high office, which will devastate the unions. Project 25 will make union organizing more difficult, reduce overtime pay, weaken health and safety protections, make it harder to raise the minimum wage, and affect many other labor rights and protections.
Beyond the unions is the broader attack on the working class, and if the working class becomes weaker in general, so will the Teamsters. Immigrant workers will be on the front line. Trump’s white nationalist immigration advisor Steven Miller and former acting director of ICE and intellectual author of the family separation policy Thomas Homan have been charged with rounding up and deporting some eleven million undocumented immigrants who are workers in agriculture, dairy farms, meat packing, construction, hotels and restaurants, many of them union members and some of them Teamsters. In the West Coast state of California, Oregon and Washington, there are something like 200,000 Teamster food processing workers, most of the immigrants and no doubt some undocumented. These attacks on the immigrants will rip the heart out of some local unions.
What we can also expect is the attack on public employees. Trump’s buddy Elon Musk, the high-tech tycoon and world’s richest man, now sometimes referred to as “the co-president,” is a fierce opponent of unions and treats his employees in demeaning and humiliating ways. Trump has given Musk and pharmaceutical magnate Vivek Ramaswamy the job of slashing government bureaucracy. There are 1.2 million union members in the federal sector, and Trump and Musk want to get rid of them and other workers protected by civil service and replace them with political appointees. If they are successful, many government agencies providing health, education, and social security services may become dysfunctional, affecting millions of working families, children, the elderly, and those with disabilities.
O’Brien wrote in an opinion piece in the journal Compact, “For decades, the Teamsters and the GOP haven’t seen eye-to-eye on many issues. But in recent years, a growing group of Republicans have proved that they are willing to listen to and stand with workers fighting a broken system.” Not true. Not at all true. In fact, the Republican Party has become more anti-union and anti-worker than ever, determined to destroy unions and attack workers. While the president appointed Chavez-DeRemer, many Republicans loathe her because she couponed the Pro-Act which would have facilitated union organizing. So she might not be confirmed by the Senate.
Beyond these traditional labor issues, Trump’s threat to declare a national emergency and to mobilize the U.S. military to confront social protests threatens the democratic rights and civil liberties of all working people. Most Americans are wage-earners, working people, and so civil rights movements such as Black Lives Matter, the Women’s March, and demonstrations for LGBT rights are also part of the workers’ movement in the broadest sense. These movements, just like workers and unions, need the right to speak out, to publish the truth, and to gather and march to protest.
U.S. unions and workers are threatened by Trump, and if any of them lose, we all lose, including the Teamsters. O’Brien believes that having virtually endorsed Trump and gotten approval for his Labor Secretary candidate, that he won his wager. I believe he lost and because of that vain bet we could all lose.
*I believe I’ve given Lori Chavez-DeRemer short shrift. She seems to have a great commitment to labor than I’ve given her. As note in Vox, Nov. 27, 2024, “She has a solid pro-worker record that differs notably from many of the positions Trump has previously backed. Chavez-DeRemer is one of just five House Republicans who supported the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, a bill that would expand workers’ ability to unionize that Trump’s White House advisers recommended he veto. She also backed the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act, legislation that shields public sector workers’ ability to unionize, which conservatives have also chafed against. And she voted against a GOP effort to overturn a Biden administration labor rule related to workers’ retirement savings, Bloomberg Law reports.” Nevertheless, she has little possibility of influencing Trump’s policies, which will be anti-worker and anti-union.
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