Despite Sean O’Brien’s support for Trump at the RNC, let’s be clear: A second Trump term would not be a win for the labor movement.
Republican presidential candidate and former president Donald Trump walks to a podium to deliver remarks after meeting with leaders of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in 2024.
(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
Teamster President Sean O’Brien ended the first day of the Republican convention with the longest speech of the night.
Like everyone else, O’Brien read his speech from a teleprompter, taking the opportunity to blast corporate America’s greed, union-busting, and Amazon, but praising Donald Trump for welcoming the first Teamsters president to speak at a Republican National Convention and for being “one tough SOB.” While he didn’t criticize any Republican elected officials during his speech, O’Brien praised Republican Senators Hawley and Vance, as well as others: “a growing group that has shown the courage to sit down and consider points of view that aren’t funded by big money.”
What O’Brien left out of the speech is as important as what he included. He took the opportunity to criticize the federal judiciary, yet he failed to mention that nearly all the offending judges in those cases were nominated by Trump or Bush. These include Texas District Judge Campbell Barker, recently vacating the National Labor Relations Board’s critical joint employer rule, or the Supreme Court in 2018 eliminating public-sector agency fees in Janus. He praised Hawley for picketing with General Motors workers, but never mentioned that Biden’s NLRB appointments, particularly to the General Counsel, are likely the best ever, with one decision after another aimed at restoring and promoting collective bargaining: the bedrock of any union.
In addition to his speech, the Teamsters leader has also donated $45,000 to the RNC, according to The American Prospect, “inviting Trump in to speak to his executive board.”
While the US Chamber of Commerce will long remember O’Brien’s blistering attack, for Republican union members he provided total cover for voting Trump/Vance in November. This is ironic, considering that during Trump’s term as president, the NLRB dismantled any gains that were made during the Obama years. In addition to Trump’s nominating some of the worst federal judges on workers’ rights, abortion, and climate, his budgets deliberately decimated the NLRB. Trump’s tax policy and military spending usurped any potential spending on working-class needs, and created huge deficits. All the while, Trump fed the narrative that while military spending should grow, human needs could be met in the private marketplace.
My grandmother used to say, “I’ll watch your feet, not your mouth.” Trump’s mouth is bad, but his feet are much worse. In early 2017, Trump told AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka that he would be the best US president in history for American workers. Classic right-wing rhetoric aims to separate workers from organizing and collective action by saying over and over that free markets will bring prosperity for all, fueled by tax cuts for the rich that create jobs at the bottom. But the economic record of the last 100 years clearly makes the case for governmental regulation, including a labor board that promotes collective bargaining, a judiciary that backs up those regulations, and a working-class movement that supports a wide range of social justice policies.
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O’Brien’s plea to Republicans for bipartisan support for labor law reform is already dwarfed by Elon’s Musk’s commitment to donate $45 million a month to a Trump super PAC. Musk and his friends won’t mind O’Brien’s attacks on his class or the US Chamber of Commerce, as long as a second Trump term returns the NLRB to being a union-busting agency and the federal judiciary, armed with new Trump nominees, continues to support the billionaires and prevent union organizing from making any real difference. Even Bezos and the Amazon management can ignore 30 seconds in a speech attacking their greed, as long as Trump delivers the elimination of an NLRB that continues to try to force them to the bargaining table, and tax policy that feeds corporate profits.
For too many of us in labor, we confuse our individual journeys in life with a collective one. We all echo the rhetoric of an “injury to one is an injury to all,” but too often our own immediate fame, or even our own organization, takes precedence over the needs of working-class Americans. With just 6 percent of collective bargaining covered here in the United States—the lowest, by far, of any democratic nation—we need to focus on outcomes, not our individual value as a messenger. We can’t condemn O’Brien for speaking at the RNC unless we commit to working together in a much deeper way, and building a movement for economic justice and democracy, and a political movement that delivers results, and not just promises.
At this moment, with a binary choice facing us in the presidential election, we should be clear that there is a huge difference for working-class Americans between Biden and Trump. This is not the Republican Party of Gerald Ford, who supported collective bargaining and signed the 1974 extension of the National Labor Relations Act. This is a Republican Party fueled by union-busting billionaires who are convinced that hiring expensive law firms will run out the clock on workers who organize, and elected leaders like Trump who want to ensure that law enforcement and the judiciary will be on their side.
Aside from a few of Sean O’Brien’s words, there will be nothing at the Republican convention that will lead to happier lives or more power for American workers, and that is a reality we must never, ever forget.
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Larry Cohen
Larry Cohen is a past president of the Communications Workers of America, the board chair of Our Revolution, and a member of the Democratic National Committee.
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