by Edward Ring
The fact that the Republican National Committee invited Teamsters President Sean O’Brien spoke at their convention last week, and the fact that he showed up and delivered an impassioned speech to a largely supportive audience, is another example of a historic shift in political power.
O’Brien’s presence at the convention was his confirmation that support for Donald Trump is higher among households affiliated with trade unions than among the general public. An ABC News poll conducted earlier this year showed Trump beating Biden by a 50-41 margin, while overall, Biden had 47 percent support to Trump’s 43 percent.
While some of O’Brien’s remarks undoubtedly made some people in the convention audience uncomfortable, the people who might have been most offended were not present – think Romney, Bush, Cheney and Ryan. And at the very least, as the crowd listened to O’Brien make his case, they must have thought that the enemy of my enemy was my friend.
More generally, O’Brien needs to recognize that neutrality, if not outright support for Trump’s candidacy, is the only way to avoid dangerously alienating himself from his members. Most unions are out of touch. According to Open SecretsIn the 2023-24 election cycle so far, 87 percent of political contributions from labor interests in federal elections have gone to Democrats, with just 13 percent going to Republicans. And that’s despite data showing that at least half of union households now support Trump.
Trump is aware of this disconnect. During his own convention speeches, he called on the United Auto Workers to fire their president, Shawn Fain. And why shouldn’t they? Because the UAW, along with the leadership of almost every union in the United States, has come to terms with the Uniparty on the biggest strategic issues affecting our economy and the well-being of American workers. They have more in common with the Romney, Bush, Cheney, and Ryan agendas than they do with their own members.
What have American labor leaders said about the one-party agenda that is crippling the middle class and destroying the social mobility of low-income households? Have they used their political influence to demand an end to unchecked illegal immigration? They need to understand that when you flood the labor market, you drive down wages. And have they stood up to the climate crisis lobby, a special interest-driven scam that rewards politically connected, rent-seeking corporations and makes the cost of living unaffordable while wealth flows from middle- and low-income communities to corporations and billionaires?
American unions did not demand that we control our borders and did not oppose environmental extremism. And while they may have been frail in opposing corporate invaders (think Mitt Romney and Bain Capital— the quintessential example) who used inventive financing to take over companies, load them up with debt, sell assets, move operations overseas, pay themselves obscene bonuses, and leave behind a devastated heartland, never effectively stopped it from happening. The legacy of that failure — and Romney’s gain — is written on the graves of millions of Americans who were driven into despair, jobless and hopeless, finding deadly solace in fentanyl.
Where were unions when crony-fueled, unregulated neoliberalism destroyed our jobs market and 10 million illegal immigrants poured across open borders to take any jobs that were left? Where are they now?
For that matter, have American union leaders bothered to criticize the toxic social rhetoric of Democrats who espouse an absurd ideology of race and gender that is patently false and deeply offensive to the huge majority of their members?
The leaders of America’s labor unions have a chance to assist put back in office a president who openly opposes the importation of affordable labor and the exportation of good jobs. Someone who unquestioningly opposes the takeover of wealth and power that hides behind environmentalism. Someone who clearly cares about the American worker.
Unions may not find a full ideological alignment with Republicans. They would have to admit that petite businesses and independent contractors are not fair targets for union recruitment because they do more harm than good to the economy, to workers, to entrepreneurs and owners, and to the freedom to innovate. But unions can play a critical strategic role in the fight against neoliberals and globalists and the environmental lobby—which defines today’s Democratic politicians and their donors—and in doing so, they can assist lower the cost of living and create great job opportunities. That would assist All workers in America, including, but not narrow to, their own members. Isn’t that their mission? Prosperity All employees?
Finally, private-sector unions in America, starting with the Teamsters and the United Auto Workers, should recognize now that they have almost nothing in common with public-sector unions. In addition to public-safety unions, such as the U.S. Border Patrol, who supported Trump for president in 2024, most public sector unions are actively working to support a globalist corporate agenda. Powerful teachers unions are pushing divisive racial and gender ideology into our K-12 schools, colleges, and universities. We welcome mass immigration while indoctrinating newcomers to resent and fear “white privilege.” They are in league with environmental extremists, and despite their rhetoric, everything they do is completely indifferent to the plight of America’s shrinking middle class.
The brutal truth is that public sector unions win when America fails. They demand more government regulation and government bureaucracy, imposing burdens on private sector job creators and discouraging organic solutions to social problems in the private sector. Then, when their favorite programs fail, they demand more taxes, more regulations, more spending, more bureaucracy, more dues-paying members of public sector unionsand more subsidies to their crony corporate allies to supposedly fix the problems they created. And it just keeps getting worse. If you want to see this dysfunctional cycle in its final stages, come to California.
Private sector labor costs aren’t the main problem for American businesses. They are regulation and taxes. Perhaps Sean O’Brien realizes this and knows he has nothing to lose and everything to gain by supporting a novel, revived, pro-worker Republican Party. We can hope.
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Edward Ring is a senior fellow at the Center for American Greatness. He is also director of water and energy policy at the California Policy Center, which he co-founded in 2013 and served as its first president. Ring is the author of Fixing California: Abundance, Pragmatism, Optimism (2021) and The Abundance Choice: Our Fight for More Water in California (2022).
Photo “Sean O’Brien” by Sean O’Brien, CEO of the International Brotherhood of Professional Drivers.
