The Teamsters’ Midterm Disaster (Joe Allen)

The Teamsters’ Midterm Disaster

By Joe Allen

Despite a post-election effort to perfume up the performance of the Teamsters’ in the recent midterm elections, a string of high profile endorsements, many with the blessing of its General President Sean O’Brien went down to a thumping defeat. The historic ‘blue wave’ changed the color of the electoral map in the United States and raised political hopes for many people that a change in direction in the country is possible. Trump’s second term was a nightmare and saw a dramatic shift to the left by many working class people.

Liz Shuler, president of the sclerotic and long declining AFL-CIO captured some of this feeling when she boasted:

“This blue wave was union-made. The billionaires had the money in this election, but working people had the power. The people who make this country run issued a clear mandate last night. Speaking with a unified voice, workers demanded that their elected leaders fight to raise their wages and lower costs, expand access to health care and unions, hold billionaire CEOs accountable, and check the Trump administration’s attacks on their freedoms. The labor movement is ready to work with these newly elected members of Congress, governors and state legislators on a bold agenda to deliver real change for the working class.”

Whether workers get real change after many failed blue waves during the last twenty years, is another question, but can Sean O’Brien make the same claims as Shuler? With a necklace of far right creeps hung around the Teamsters’ neck going down to glorious defeat, most notably Greg Abbott in Texas and Vivek Ramaswamy in Ohio, it is hard to see how the Teamsters have any credibility with anyone, anywhere. It’s worth asking out loud a question that many people have asked privately, are the Teamsters trying to be the most hated union in the United States?

The Road to Perdition

The Teamsters’ midterm disaster has been foretold for several years now. Soon after the Teamsters settled their overhyped 2023 contract with United Parcel Service (UPS), Sean O’Brien, the union’s General President elected in 2021, had a string of chummy meetings with far right political figures in Washington, D.C. with then Senator J.D. Vance and Missouri Senator Josh Hawley. O’Brien was then invited to Mar-a-Largo by then former President Donald for an amiable meeting and photo opportunity. Trump was then invited to the Teamsters’ headquarters in Washington. For all this outreach to the far right, O’Brien was rewarded with a prime time speaking slot at the 2024 Republican Convention.

From there, it just got worse, as documented by Current Affairs contributor Hank Kennedy in his article, Sean O’Brien Sold Labor to Trump, and Got Nothing:

Under O’Brien the Teamsters went on record supporting the president’s pick for Secretary of Labor, Lori Chavez DeRemer, and O’Brien himself wrote an op-ed calling her “The Pro-Worker Choice for Labor” in Compact. Under questioning, DeRemer admitted she no longer supported the section of the PRO Act weakening state anti-union right-to-work laws. This bothered O’Brien not a bit. On Fox, he said that he and his bosom buddy Josh Hawley were working on a version of the PRO Act that “may not include [a ban on right-to-work]” O’Brien seemed to say that right-to-work laws could be “what works” for certain states. At least, that’s how the vehemently anti-union National Right to Work Committee interpreted his remarks in a post on X.

DeRemer resigned in disgrace, but was a guest of Sean O’Brien, whom she called her “good friend,” at the recent Teamsters convention in Las Vegas.

The Teamsters didn’t formally endorse Trump or the Democratic presidential candidate Vice-President Kamala Harris, but the non-endorsement of Harris was seen as a victory by Trump. Speaking to reporters, Trump said of the Teamsters decision not to endorse a candidate: “It’s a great honor. They’re not going to endorse the Democrats. That’s a big thing.” Most people following union and Teamster politics saw it as a backhanded endorsement of Trump.

“Sean O’Brien is not the first Teamster leader to have endorsed right-wing politicians hostile to organized labor,” Kennedy argued. “The Teamsters endorsed Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush, usually in a cynical effort to stave off federal investigations and indictments of corrupt leadership. As far as is known, there’s no such cloud hanging over O’Brien’s head. He walks this road to perdition under his own steam.”

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“Teamsters vs. Everybody”

O’Brien has popularized the slogan “Teamsters vs. Everybody” during his first term in office. It articulates the strange and insular world of the Teamsters. And, he means it. The Teamsters under O’Brien’s leadership, with a handful of local exceptions, has remained silent to aloof to hostile to the various campaigns — Palestine, anti-ICE, opposition to Elon Musk and DOGE and the War in Iran, widespread corruption and massive inequality — that created the tsunami toppled the Republican control of Congress and wrecked MAGA. Back in February, I tried to raise awareness about the Teamsters’ endorsements in the upcoming election after the Texas Teamsters endorsed Gov. Greg Abbott for reelection. I wrote:

Let’s be clear about Abbott: He has no redeeming qualities, nor does he support policies that benefit working-class people. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. He has a wide-ranging anti-working-class political agenda. He enthusiastically supports Texas’s near ban on abortion, or the so-called “Heartbeat Bill.” He supports school privatization and the death penalty. All of these issues are near and dear to the Christian Nationalist Right in Texas and the myriad of police and sheriff’s associations that support his reelection campaign.

Abbott, like Trump, revels in cruelty. In June 2023, the Texas Tribune reported:

In a week when parts of the state are getting triple-digit temperatures and weather officials urge Texans to stay cool and hydrated, Gov. Greg Abbott gave final approval to a law that will eliminate local rules mandating water breaks for construction workers. House Bill 2127 was passed by the Texas Legislature during this year’s regular legislative session. Abbott signed it Tuesday. It will go into effect on Sept. 1.

Texas is the state where the most workers die from high temperatures, government data shows. At least 42 workers died in Texas between 2011 and 2021 from environmental heat exposure, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Workers’ unions claim this data doesn’t fully reflect the magnitude of the problem because heat-related deaths are often recorded under a different primary cause of injury.

Abbott maybe the worst of all the candidates endorsed by the Teamsters this year, but it’s a ghoul’s list to choose from, including the anti-Woke, anti-union Vivek Ramaswamy for Governor of Ohio, to the fanatical Israel supporter Rep. Mike Lawler of New York, to insider trader Rep. Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania to Rep. Max Miller accused of spousal and child abuse. O’Brien personally endorsed Lawler at a rally in New York, and hosted him, Bresnahan, and Ramaswamy on his little-watched podcast Better Bad Ideas. All of them have low, life-time scores for voting on pro-union legislation calculated by the AFL-CIO and each one went down to defeat on November third.

Nixon vs. Moody

However, it was O’Brien’s endorsement of Florida’s junior U.S. Senator Ashley Moody that really irked many people, who don’t normally pay attention to Teamster politics. He announced on X, “Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien here. Just voted in the State of Florida for the first time, and very proud to have cast a ballot for @SenAshleyMoody.” Moody was appointed by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis to replace Marco Rubio in the U.S. Senate following his confirmation as Secretary of State by President Donald Trump in 2025. Moody had been DeSantis’ Attorney General doing his dirty work. Journalist Hamilton Nolan wrote recently:

Ashley Moody was the attorney general of Florida under Ron Desantis. She supported the vicious anti-union state laws that Ron Desantis has passed — which aim to destroy public sector union membership in the state. She, in fact, personally defended those union-busting laws in court and filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration for trying to push back on them. (She also joined a Republican lawsuit trying to overturn the 2020 election results, helped to funnel $10 million intended for children’s health care into right wing political efforts, and pushed Covid conspiracies, among other nice things.)

In sharp contrast, “Moody’s Democratic opponent Angie Nixon, who Sean O’Brien did not vote for, is a former union organizer who has personally walked Teamsters picket lines alongside Sean O’Brien.” Nixon joined the Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) in June 2026, another in a growing list of DSA candidates or supported candidates or the left in general attacked by O’Brien. She responded to O’Brien, “Ashley Moody NEVER walked the line with you @TeamsterSOB. But, ok brother. Shout out to all of the rank & file Teamsters that are voting for me. I will ALWAYS STAND WITH YOU!” Moody won by a bare majority of 50.8% of the vote to Nixon’s 48%. Could a Teamster endorsement of Nixon make a difference? Possibly.

Hamilton Nolan was one of first writers on the left to forefront the disastrous Teamsters’ endorsements. He wrote:

Sean O’Brien is an idiot. Let us count the ways, from petty to substantial. As a native Floridian, I am quite familiar with the “rich Yankee testosterone guy who moves to Florida and votes Republican.” The state is crawling with these clowns. Generally they congregate in gaudy cigar bars and on pleasure boats, so it’s easy to stay away from them, but their negative effect on state politics is harder to avoid. I am also familiar with the compulsion of aging men to post clips of themselves working out and doing ostentatiously tough guy stuff. As men, we struggle against our own mortality by being macho, rather than by having “emotional intelligence” or whatever. Testosterone is a powerful and dangerous drug.

I really agree with Nolan on this. The highest levels of the decision making body of the Teamsters have been captured by the sad, pathetic, bloviating, and far right manosphere. They would be comical, if they weren’t so incompetent, if not outright dangerous. O’Brien appears to have believed that Trump’s re-election in 2024 was a permanent realignment of U.S. politics and he would pursue a self-serving strategy at the expense of the rest of the working class. While he claims to pursue a political strategy that is “bipartisan” or “not beholden to anyone or a party” as he embraced the far right, and it’s blown up in his face.

Yet, the problem runs much deeper than that. The Teamsters recent convention saw O’Brien and his supporters elected by 96% of the delegates. It was the first since 1991 that there wasn’t a rank and file election to elect the top officers of the union. A conservative and bloated bureaucracy earning multiple salaries dominates the union, that on local and state wide is beholden to the other party of big business: the Democrats. The immediate issue is how long can the reformers and the left inside and outside the Teamsters allow Sean O’Brien to pursue his dangerous liaison with the far right?

Written by Joe Allen

Joe Allen is a former Teamster. He has written for Counterpunch, Rebel, Tempest, Jacobin, Socialist Worker, and the International Socialist Review.