“You’re free to hold any opinion you want, but one thing is clear: President Trump is a candidate who is not afraid to let new, vocal and often critical voices be heard,” O’Brien said to cheers.
O’Brien’s arrival marks an unusual departure for one of the nation’s most powerful labor unions, which has supported Democrats for decades, at a time when the Republican Party is divided over whether to move in a more populist direction. Right wing politics.
In her speech, the union president from suburban Boston criticized big companies like Amazon, Uber and Lyft for failing American workers, and praised Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) in particular for questioning corporate power.
O’Brien, who was invited to speak by former President Donald Trump, has used his union support as political leverage in Washington. Most major unions are backing President Biden, who has done all he can to protect unions.
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O’Brien has also requested to speak at the Democratic National Convention in August but has not yet received an invitation, Teamsters spokeswoman Kara Dennis told The Washington Post.
The Teamsters, which has about 1.3 million members, many of them in key battleground states, won’t announce its endorsement until after both party conventions, Dennis said last week.
O’Brien explained that the union had decided to wait to announce its support this year in order to carefully evaluate its options, and said it would “not take for granted” the members’ vote.
Some labor experts say O’Brien may feel pressured to take into account the diverse political leanings of his union’s members because he won the union’s top job in 2021 running as a reform candidate who promised greater membership involvement in union decision-making. O’Brien also recognizes that many of the Teamsters’ rank-and-file members are Republicans and Trump supporters, experts say.
Trump and O’Brien’s relationship began earlier this year, when the two met privately at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in January. That meeting infuriated some of the union’s left-leaning leaders and members, with one board member calling Trump “a known union destroyer, a strikebreaker and a seditionist.”
The Teamsters’ president and rank-and-file members met separately with both Trump and Biden at the union’s headquarters in Washington. The union donated $45,000 to the Republican National Convention Fund this year, its largest donation to the Republican Party in decades.
The company also sent $135,000 to the Democratic National Committee in December and donated $15,000 in March.
President Trump’s announcement on Monday that he had chosen Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate marks another notable move toward the Republican Party’s rightward stance. A populist platform that blends conservative positions on culture war issues with economic nationalism aimed at protecting American workers from free trade policies and deindustrialization.
Vance joined autoworker picket lines in Ohio late last year, but has opposed pro-labor legislation. Hawley joined the autoworkers and the Teamsters on the strike line. In return, the Teamsters donated $5,000 to Hawley’s reelection campaign this year.
Trump has portrayed himself as a “pro-labor” advocate, trying to present himself as a champion of the working class, but he has supported many policies that limit worker power. As president, he appointed leaders of the National Labor Relations Board that have issued policies and rulings that weaken worker rights. Trump has had little support from labor unions outside of law enforcement.
Meanwhile, Biden, the self-described “most pro-union president ever,” has made significant strides for labor unions. Many of Biden’s policies benefit the Teamsters, including a plan to save their pensions with about $36 billion in 2022, part of the American Rescue Plan that restored the retirement accounts of about 350,000 Teamsters members.
