Hurt PBS Tackles Teamsters for Not Endorsing Dems: ‘Trying to Have It Both Ways?’

PBS News Hour

9/19/24

7:20:03 p.m. (ET)

Geoff Bennett: One of the nation’s largest unions, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, says it won’t make an endorsement in the 2024 presidential election, choosing not to throw the union’s support behind either Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump.

It’s the first time the union has skipped an endorsement in a presidential race since 1996, having supported the Democratic nominee in each election since.

We’re joined now by Teamsters general president Sean O’Brien.

Thanks for coming in. We appreciate it.

Sean O’Brien, General President, Teamsters: Thank you very much, sir.

Geoff Bennett: So you said one of the reasons why the Teamsters are withholding an endorsement is because neither candidate was able to make serious commitments to your union.

There are Democrats who will look at what the Biden/Harris administration has already done, including directing a $36 billion bailout to rescue union pension plans, Teamsters’ pension plans from insolvency, and wonder, what more of a commitment do you need?

Sean O’Brien: Well, listen, that’s a great point. President Biden and his administration did fix 300 pension funds that were critically in declining and on the verge of insolvency.

But there’s a backstory to all this. In 1980, in the Teamsters union, we had 400,000 Teamster truck drivers in the freight division. Democratic legislation led by Senator Ted Kennedy and signed off by Joe Biden in 1980 passed trucking deregulation. And we lost 400,000 jobs. Companies went bankrupt.

And that caused a huge strain on pension funds that just kept — each year, it kept getting worse and worse. And, yes, they fixed the problem, but that problem was created by the people that fixed the problem, and they don’t want to recognize that. And I appreciate it. My members appreciate the pension being fixed.

But I always tell people, I broke my mother’s window playing street hockey in 1980, and for 40 years she’s been asking me to fix it. I finally fix it. Should I look for praise for fixing a problem that I helped create?

Geoff Bennett: You were invited to address the Republican National Convention back in July, the first time a Teamsters leader had ever done so. Why are you withholding an endorsement from President Trump?

Sean O’Brien: I went to the RNC not with an agenda other than to — an endorsement. I went there to talk about American workers, talk about our struggles, talk about what both parties need to do to win back the support of American workers and how valuable American workers are.

That — speaking out at the Republican National Convention, we asked both the Democratic National Convention and the RNC at the same time, and we only heard back from the RNC. I would have gave the same speech at the DNC had we been given the opportunity.

Geoff Bennett: You were pretty critical of Donald Trump after that interview he did with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, where Mr. Trump advocated for firing striking employees. Was that a breaking point for you?

Sean O’Brien: It certainly didn’t help.

Look, I will never, ever allow people to fire workers for exercising their right to strike or organize, and I will call balls and strikes like I have done all along. And former President Trump was out of line with his comments, and I expressed my feelings to him, but it resonated with our members, and that was one of the reasons that the international couldn’t endorse President Trump either, amongst other reasons.

We didn’t get a commitment on vetoing national right-to-work. And, conversely, with Kamala Harris, we didn’t get a commitment on protecting our members’ right to strike under the Railway Labor Act. So there were a lot of mitigating factors on why we didn’t endorse nationally.

And, look, by the polling alone that we did, our members sent a clear message to the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. We are getting attacked from the far left because we didn’t make an endorsement, and the far right is not happy that we are working with some Republicans to try and get some things done.

So this is an opportunity for both parties, Democrats to reestablish their commitment and look back and say, something must be broken. Instead of looking to blame the leaders or the members, they should look in the mirror and say, how do we fix this? We were the working people party at one time.

And it’s an opportunity for Republicans, who claim they want to be the working people’s party, it’s an opportunity for them to prove it, support a version of the PRO Act, support bankruptcy reform, support issues that actually affect working people.

And our system is broken, and it needs to be fixed. And the name-calling, the finger-pointing, it’s got to end.

Geoff Bennett: Following the national Teamsters’ non-endorsement, local Teamsters unions, as you well know, in the key battleground states of Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsin, announced their support for Harris, and there are nearly a dozen Teamsters locals and the Teamsters’ national Black Caucus all supporting Harris.

Do you risk looking out of step with the union rank and file?

Sean O’Brien: No, I definitely don’t look out of step, because, remember, we represent Democrats, Republicans, and independents.

And, clearly, half of our membership Democrats and half are Republicans and some are independents as well. So we have got to represent everybody equally. The local unions, they’re autonomous. We’re not a top-down organization. We’re a bottom-up organization.

Our members, the leaders, have the ability to put boots on the ground and support the candidates that they want to support. The international, we just couldn’t make that decision. And we have a very, very qualified general executive board of leaders around the country, and the non-endorsement was overwhelmingly supported.

Geoff Bennett: Donald Trump is claiming this as a win. Here’s what he told supporters at a rally last night in New York.

Donald Trump, Former President of the United States (R) and Current U.S. Presidential Candidate: Earlier today, I was honored to receive the endorsement of the rank-and-file membership of the Teamsters. I love the Teamsters.

But this hasn’t happened in so many decades. We won the overwhelming majority of the local chapters and the members, and as a result, the national organization has refused to endorse the Democrat candidate for the first time in many, many decades.

Geoff Bennett: So is what he said, is that accurate?

Sean O’Brien: No, we released polling data that showed that he was ahead in the poll. It was an opinion of the members that actually took the time to poll. It wasn’t an official endorsement of the membership.

But the polling would suggest that people are favorable in voting for Trump, just as well as they may be favorable for voting for Vice President Harris.

Geoff Bennett: The Harris campaign has picked up the endorsement and the support of other unions, the United Auto Workers, the AFL-CIO, United Steelworkers. What do you say to those who make the case that the Teamsters, in not endorsing at all, are trying to play both sides, trying to have it both ways?

Sean O’Brien: We’re certainly not trying to play both sides. Look, those unions have their own policies, procedures.

Most of those unions — you mentioned the AFL-CIO. They jumped out in January for President Biden, some a little bit later in March. We have a system. We did something that we have never done before by polling our members. We did three major polls. We did a straw poll. We did a Q.R. polling of 1.3 of our million members, electronic poll, and then we also did research-based polling.

And the straw poll, narrowly, President Biden won. And the other two polls that were participated by our rank-and-file members showed that President Trump, former President Trump, was leading in those polls significantly.