Anyone that watched that speech knows he didn’t give an endorsement of the GOP. The speech was largely pro labor, which both parties have ignored.
I know the DNC isn’t exactly a pro-union party, but the GOP is an outright anti-union party. I am curious why the Teamsters went with this move, perhaps they want increased protectionism to fight outsourcing of jobs? But the Teamsters are largely truckers, ie you cannot outsource these jobs.
Very odd choice.
Some of my republican coworkers are now saying he is a great guy that stands for the working man. Maybe that was the play.
When the fuck has a “business man” ever given a shit about anything but money?
He didn’t actually endorse Trump or Vance which is key. If he had, well, fuck him. But he demanded concessions.
That said: more than anything if you look at the crowd you’ll see the remarkable difference between the ruling class attending and the working class base that make up the GOP. That was a speech to the GOP’s working class base to make demands.
I have strong doubts if it will be fruitful, but I’m willing to see it out. Took some balls to make that speech without endorsing anyone.
The secret ingredient is racism
Thirteen former Black and Hispanic employees for the Teamsters International Union filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against the union and its president, Sean O’Brien, alleging racial discrimination over their firings after O’Brien assumed the helm in March 2022.
…
The lawsuit claimed that “rather than maintaining or increasing diversity at Teamsters, IBT [International Brotherhood of Teamsters] fired more than a dozen people of color and turned the Organizing Department from a diverse department into a majority white department”.
The terminations “set back the Organizing Department’s goals of effectively recruiting and organizing non-whites”, it alleged, “in favor of bolstering the majority white membership and leadership of the union. In total, Teamsters terminated 72.73% of the department’s staffers who were people of color, while firing only 28.57% of white staffers. Teamsters then proceeded to hire new staff members who were 73.33% white.”
The lawsuit also claimed that O’Brien “publicly humiliated” the plaintiffs in the case, claiming they were fired because they were “bad apples” and were “lazy” in their work.
e; alright, since someone else brought it up, breaking the railroad strike in 2022 probably didn’t do Biden any favors, but the only difference between what Biden did there and what Trump would have done is Trump probably would’ve tried to find a way to have a SWAT team raid union offices or some crap when he did it, and no union president (whose whole job is dealing with political coalitions and compromises) is going to be dumb enough not to know this, so I maintain racism is the only thing that explains O’Brien’s behavior.
e2; Also, every other union saw what Biden did with the rail strike, and y’know what a ton of them did? Endorsed him because they’re not getting anyone better this election and they know it.
It’s a bizarre thing, but union workers are often conservatives who completely ignore the anti-union sentiments of the GOP. They think the only union in the world that should exist is their own, and no others.
This is how the GOP is able to convince unions to vote against their own interests. The GOP will tell a union to its face how important it is, earning their votes. Then, once elected, pass legislation harming that same union.
I do generally think it’s more of a case where American workers are often reactionary due to America’s overall circumstances and Material Conditions in the broader geopolitical landscape, than anything else. Nationalism is a big thing in America, Union or not.
Imperialism also inflates Worker’s living standards, as well as keeping a domestic underclass of immigrants willing to work for the barest wages via threat of expulsion. Unions can often be anti-immigration because of this, additionally adding to reactionary rhetoric among unions.
Most people only consider a few key stances when deciding on a candidate. The GOP is anti-union but that may not be what is most important to truckers in a union.
The GOP has also successfully gaslit their base into believing the two best things for unions are controlling immigration and “tax cuts”.
As someone who worked in a union I can vouch for this ^
Most of the guys I worked with don’t even like the union they are in, they felt they were cheated into giving their money away for “no backup”
When in reality these guys would have lost their jobs YEARS AGO but because the union defends them against management, but because these guys can’t do what ever the hell they want (ie call in 80 out of 90 days, taking 1 hour breaks, having todo what their job description says) they just don’t care…
They also think “They’ll never out source our jobs, or robots can’t replace us!” When in fact management DID do that years ago but the Union won in deliberations and everyone seems to have forgotten.
I hate this timeline
Worked in many union shops as a degree operational support function. Typical union front line are dumb fuck conservatives with let’s go Brandon bumper stickers. They’re making $45/hr and don’t realize they’re supporting the party that wants them making $14/hr like the warehouse next to theirs.
Guess they didn’t like biden fucking over unions
Idk about ever, since the neoliberal turn in the 80s your probably right, but that ignores FDR who set the foundations for the NLRB and fought hard to get the courts to get them any sort of power. Bidens been a breath of fresh air from the 40 year onslaught against unions but he doesn’t compare as well to presidents before that in the new deal era. Even Nixon got OSHA and ERISA signed, granted he had a more functional congress.
I love when someone tees up this stuff
So one of Biden’s FIRST actions in office was to fire the piece of shit that Trump put in charge of the NLRB, short cutting the normal procedure for it which actually caused a little bit of a fight, and then to put in a whole bunch of actually pro-labor people. They’ve been backstopping all these pretty remarkable union gains that have been happening the last few years.
The Teamsters, for whatever stupid/corrupt reason, are pretty much the only union that hasn’t come out swinging hard for Biden in the election, because unlike the media they are aware of how much things have been changing for them in the last few years and want it to continue instead of Trump putting Margaret Thatcher in charge of the NLRB of whatever the fuck he wants to do instead.
Oh, and also he broke a rail strike that would have caused some inflation (which I know the media and the people on Lemmy would have been super understanding of the full context of and wouldn’t have caused any problems), and then once no one was paying attention anymore, his administration kept working the issue and got the workers the sick days they were striking for in the first place. So you I guess you do have a point that he’s horrible. I take it all back.
Oh, and also he broke a rail strike that would have caused some inflation (which I know the media and the people on Lemmy would have been super understanding of the full context of and wouldn’t have caused any problems), and then once no one was paying attention anymore,
The railroad in question reached an agreement with some but not all of their unions to give them some of the sick days they had been asking for, Biden’s administration had no official role in it. Moreover, saying unions can’t strike when it’s economically or politically inconvenient is tantamount to saying that can’t strike at all. There’s a reason hundreds of labor historians wrote Biden and his labor secretary an open letter condemning them for what they did with this strike.
Of course, anyone saying they would have gotten any better treatment under a Republican administration is delusional or lying, and there is some pretty smoking gun evidence of racism from this particular union president (see: my other comment in this thread), which is probably why basically every other union has endorsed Biden except this one (like, unions are savvy political organizations that know to not make the perfect the enemy of the good, they do it all the time), but the fact is on at least one occasion when some unions needed Biden to stand up for them he threw them straight under the bus, and acting like he didn’t or it’s no big deal is extremely unhelpful to Biden’s reelection efforts.
Biden’s administration had no official role in it
Hm… I think you might be right. The White House sort of took credit for it, and I thought I remembered that they were in on some of the negotiations and I’ve been saying they were, but everything I can find now seems to indicate that it was just the unions pressuring the railroads. I can’t find anything to indicate that Biden’s people were involved.
Moreover, saying unions can’t strike when it’s economically or politically inconvenient is tantamount to saying that can’t strike at all. There’s a reason hundreds of labor historians wrote Biden and his labor secretary an open letter condemning them for what they did with this strike.
100%. I agree. Like I say, my personal feeling is that, if the workers want to strike, then fuck the economy. If the economy tanks and we get some level of “oh god I’m really struggling with the price of hot dogs / with how my stocks are doing,” then maybe all of those people who are unhappy about that happening should live for a year in the railroad workers’ shoes.
I’m just saying, it’s extremely relevant what all other actions Biden did for unions when it wasn’t the whole economy at stake, and that I kind of get why he did it. I’m not saying I think that’s the right way for the US government to react to a big rail strike or that the Biden administration is a good ending point for progress.
acting like he didn’t or it’s no big deal is extremely unhelpful to Biden’s reelection efforts.
Fair enough. Acting like the other 95% of his union actions didn’t happen is also unhelpful to Biden’s reelection efforts, though.
and then once no one was paying attention anymore, his administration kept working the issue and got the workers the sick days they were striking for in the first place.
some of the workers got some of their demands. if they’d been able to bring the rail to a halt, they might have gotten it all.
Let’s take all that “how DARE Biden let there be inflation, doesn’t he understand my grocery bill” energy and apply it to this here comment right here
Honestly, in terms of my own personal beliefs, I agree with you. I think if the workers that make the US economy operate decide to bring it to its knees until it starts treating them like humans again, fuckin God bless ‘em and I’ll start eating ramen and eggs until they’re done. I just think it’s a little much to ask a US President to commit the political suicide that would be allowing that to happen (in particular because, given how eager people are to blame him for inflation that wasn’t his fault, I don’t think they would react well to a big economic disruption and lots of inflation that actually was squarely his “fault”).
In response to your second paragraph, someone posted above that it’s racism. The Teamsters, at least this… Uh governing body?.. Fired a number of people in leadership, 3/4 of them racial minorities. When they rehired for these newly opened positions only 1/4 of those hired were racial minorities.
Sick nasty
Thanks for your post, it’s well written.
I have another good one very applicable to the teamsters union, Biden and democrats saved their pension fund.
Pensions that 360,000 retired teamster union workers were relying on.
I really doubt Republicans would have lifted a finger. Probably would have just laughed as one of the largest unions in America collapsed.
Heck here’s some more good union news from Democrats. The new regulations and pro labor leadership of the nlrb have helped increase union election success rate to 74%, it’s highest level in at least 15 years. It brought back over 8,000 workers that had been unjustly fired from their work places as retaliation for unionizing activities.
The contrast with Republicans couldn’t be starker. Project 2025 recommends firing general counsel and leadership of the NLRB “day one,” purging existing civil servants so they can hire their own anti union sycophants, and passing new regulations to make it easier to dissolve unions and harder to form them.
Vichy Union
How the fuck?!?
He didn’t endorse the GOP, which I thought had happened at first. But it was more of a pro labor speech in the belly of the beast. Kind of wild.
You could see the division within the working class attendees and the elitists, with the latter squirming.
The crowd booed Mitch McConnell, for context.
