It was an audience like no other. Sean O’Brien, president since 2022 of the 1.3-million-member International Brotherhood of Teamsters, took the stage at prime time July 15 to address delegates on day one of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. It was the first time a Teamsters leader had ever spoken at a national Republican convention. Former president Donald Trump looked on, his ear in a bandage from a failed assassination attempt two days earlier.
“I travel all across this country and meet with my members every week,” O’Brien told delegates. “You know what I see? An American worker being taken for granted, workers being sold out to big banks, big tech, corporates and the elite. And I’m not the only one who sees this. Everyday families see it. The American people aren’t stupid. They know the system is broken.”
O’Brien was on stage at Trump’s invitation, and thanked Trump for having the backbone to open the convention doors to a Teamster.
The Teamsters endorsed Biden in 2020 but haven’t made an endorsement yet in the 2024 presidential race.
In the distant past the Teamsters endorsed Republicans for president, including Nixon, Reagan, and Bush Sr., but the Republican party has turned more anti-union since then. The convention’s newly approved 2024 party platform contained no mention of the word union. That was actually a big improvement over the party’s 2016 and 2020 platform, which called for passage of a national right-to-work law and repeal of the Davis-Bacon requirement to pay prevailing wage on federal construction projects.
O’Brien told delegates he’s been working to win over Republicans, and said he helped turn GOP Senator Josh Hawley against the national right-to-work bill.
For a union leader, it wasn’t exactly a home team crowd. O’Brien’s remarks drew occasional applause from Republican Convention delegates, but silences as well as for nearly 18 minutes delegates took in an unfamiliar message, with references to “corporate vultures” “greedy employers” and the “economic terrorism” of companies that fire workers who try to form a union.
Better wake up democrats – losing a core constituent to the opposition.
Or, he saw it as a moment to infiltrate conservative ideology in regards to Unions. He got to stand in front of corporate elitisms and call them “vultures”. Losing a constituent or a constituent using their brain to leverage their power to get message to deaf ears?
i don’t remember the republicans being behind the 1999 WTO demonstrations in Seattle – It seemed to me it was mainly people who donate to them that was the problem and not only here but all over the world and back then Don may remember me talking with him on KBOO about its hard to tell where the church ends and the republicans begin and the church needs to stay out of our government and since its them donating to the republicans they are not going to do anything to stop it and don’t forget this is a religion from the middle east so now look where we are with issues like women’s rights and the supreme court. and it was a republican president that took babies away from their parents at the border and still over 6 years later over 1000 still have not been returned to their parents and those babies now are old enough to start grade school and its doubtful they really know who they or their parents really are.
retired member of steelworkers local 338