Anticipation swirls around potential Teamsters endorsement

A potential endorsement from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in the 2024 race remains an open question following this week’s Democratic convention.

The Teamsters union said it has historically waited until after the party conventions to endorse, making this week a pivotal milestone in the highly anticipated endorsement timeline. But joining its fellow large unions in endorsing the Democratic ticket is not a guarantee.

The Teamsters are still working through their endorsement process, according to spokesperson Kara Deniz, with member polling continuing through the end of the month and a yet-to-be scheduled roundtable with Vice President Harris on the horizon.

“We’re going to work not on anyone else’s but on our timeline, and that means that this is going to be a deliberative, thoughtful, engaging process that our members are going to be and are directly engaged in,” Deniz told The Hill.

Despite the organization’s endorsement of the Biden-Harris ticket in 2020 and past support for Democrats, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien took an unprecedented step in approaching both the Republican and Democratic national committees to request a speaking slot at their gatherings.

O’Brien took a lot of heat before taking the stage at the Republican National Convention last month, during which he slammed “elites” whose only “loyalty is to the balance sheet.”

He also challenged the notion that unions should fall in line with Democratic endorsements, saying “we have an obligation to do our due diligence” and “not just automatically support one side.” He noted that the union’s membership is made up of many Democrats, Republicans and independents.

His speech even partially spurred a top Teamsters executive to mount a bid to run against him for president when O’Brien’s current term is up in 2026. The executive, Teamsters Vice President At-Large John Palmer, said it was naive to believe that those who attended the Republican convention would support unions in “any way, shape, form or matter.”

A Fox News poll released last week found Harris led former President Trump by 10 points among union households.

But just 11 percent of Teamsters opposed O’Brien speaking at the Republican convention, and 68 percent thought it was important for him to speak at both parties’ conventions, according to Democratic pollsters employed by the Teamsters political department.

“A lot of our society nowadays, it’s far left, far right, arguments by pundits, opinions formed out the gate,” Deniz said. “It’s an important point to be able to actually stop and listen and engage with something that we need more of, and [O’Brien] is a firm believer in that.”

While O’Brien praised Trump as “one tough SOB” on the Republican convention stage, the labor leader criticized the former president after he floated firing striking workers — which is illegal — during an interview with Elon Musk, calling such a proposal “economic terrorism.”

O’Brien was not ultimately included in the speaking schedule for the Democrats this past week, which he implied Wednesday was because of “corporate elitists” during a Fox News interview.

But O’Brien also joked that he “could take it personal, but I honestly think maybe my invitation got lost in the U.S. Postal Service and next time they should try to ship it [by] UPS, it’ll guarantee delivery.”

UPS is the largest employer in the Teamsters union, which negotiated a “historic” agreement with the shipping giant during last year’s so-called Summer of Strikes, further raising the profile of unions and labor ahead of the upcoming election.

Deniz also said the endorsement “is not going to come down to personal stuff.”

“It’s going to come down to the issues and what our members want,” she said.

Issues of importance to the Teamsters include opposition to a national “right to work” and support for some version of the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would strengthen workers’ ability to form a union and bargain with their employers.

The PRO Act currently has 217 co-sponsors in the House and 48 in the Senate. Only three Republicans have signed on as co-sponsors on the House version of the bill, and there are no Republican co-sponsors on the Senate version.

Harris has been supportive of the PRO Act on the campaign trail, saying in Detroit earlier this month, “We who believe in the freedom to organize will pass the PRO Act and put an end to union-busting once and for all.”

The Trump campaign declined to comment on his position on the two policies.

Harris and Trump have both courted union and labor support throughout their campaigns, although the endorsements have largely gone to the Democrat.

An endorsement from the Teamsters, the country’s largest union, could make Trump competitive in the contest for organized labor, while a Harris endorsement could put the contest to bed.

Major unions and labor organizations including the United Auto Workers; the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, or AFL-CIO; and even the Teamsters National Black Caucus have endorsed Harris since President Biden dropped out last month.

But Republican National Committee spokesperson Anna Kelly told The Hill that Trump “is making lasting inroads with union leaders and broadening the Republican tent in a historic way.”

Republicans were “the only party to accept Sean O’Brien’s request to speak because Republicans are the party of working families,” Kelly said. “President Trump has always supported working class families with his America First Policies, and he will deliver again when we send him back to the White House.”

To be sure, large swaths of union membership may still vote for Trump even if the leaders of those unions back Harris.

Exit polls from the 2020 race found about 40 percent of voters with a union member in their household voted for Trump, and polls had shown President Biden leading among union households before he dropped out, but by a smaller margin than four years ago, one of several groups he was struggling with.

Democratic strategist Mike Mikus said O’Brien reaching out to both parties makes sense as a labor union is likely strongest when it has relationships with both sides, but he argued O’Brien made a “strategic error” in the extent of his approach to Republicans.

He said O’Brien’s actions angered many given the Biden administration’s protection of 600,000 Teamsters pensions from cuts through the American Rescue Plan.

“The thing’s always been you reward your friends and punish your enemies,” Mikus said. “Well, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris showed that they were friends when they shored up the pension fund.”

He said he doesn’t know if a formal endorsement for Harris would be as impactful at this stage of the race but believes Harris is “perfectly situated” to win over not just union members but union households, especially in his own state of Pennsylvania, a critical battleground state that will likely help decide the election.

About 13 percent of wage and salary workers were union members in Pennsylvania last year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, above the national average by a few points.

Republican strategist Saul Anuzis agreed that approaching both parties is wise as the head of an organization of diverse viewpoints but noted that O’Brien’s speech was “far from an endorsement.”

“He challenged Republicans on a lot of issues and a lot of traditional issues that are important to conservatives and Republicans, but he made the case that labor has a lot of members that are in both parties, and so I think that’s a smart way of handling it,” he said.

He added that Democrats not including him in their speaker lineup was a mistake.

Anuzis, who is a member of the Teamsters, said often the majority of members of a specific union for the group support a Republican candidate for president, even if the leadership tends to lean toward the Democrats as other unions do.

But he said an endorsement would be more influential if money or political organizing comes with it, rather than just the symbolic announcement.

“The endorsement is more functional if there’s money that comes with it or if they actually engage in anything politically,” Anuzis said. “Then it would be different. But the endorsement itself is more checking the box.”

Whether an endorsement is a checked box or windfall for either campaign, it is a tool the Teamsters can wield to build a coalition around the issues that are important to them and their members.

“As long as workers are in the news and their issues are being paid attention to, I think that’s important and that’s the goal here,” Deniz said.

Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.