How the 2024 election set the Teamsters on a collision course with their own union

For three decades, The International Brotherhood of Teamsters has been a reliable partner among the various stakeholders that make up the Democratic party’s coalition of allies. The Teamsters Union, as it is more commonly known, has endorsed the Democratic nominee for president every election year since 1996, encouraging its 1.3 million members to vote for the major political party understood as being the more labor-friendly of the two.

That streak ended this month when the union announced it would not be endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris or Donald Trump for president. In a press release the group explained that they had been “left with few commitments on top Teamsters issues” from the candidates and found “no definitive support among members for either party’s nominee.”

It is a break from tradition which, while shocking, was not wholly unforeseen. Two months earlier, union president Sean O’Brien made history as the first Teamster leader ever to address the Republican National Convention this past July. Predictably, O’Brien’s speech proved immediately polarizing within his own organization, presaging the backlash O’Brien faces now for the group’s non-endorsement — a backlash which has manifested in large part in the form of vocal endorsements for the Harris campaign from multiple local teamster chapters eschewing their national leadership.

How did one of the most powerful labor unions in the country get to this point? And with just a few weeks to go before election day, where do they go from here?

What does the non-endorsement mean for the election(s)?

Although the national governing body may have declined to endorse a candidate this year, “a wave of local and regional Teamsters union branches in battleground states rushed to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris” in the immediate wake of the group’s decision to abstain, The Washington Post said. Perhaps counterintuitively, “the outpouring of local endorsements for Harris could be more important in influencing how Teamsters turn out to vote than the national union’s decision to abstain,” since the most effective union mobilization efforts take place on the local level.

Whether done in good faith or not, O’Brien’s rightward overtures and the decision not to endorse a candidate this year has “pissed off the Democratic Party. He has pissed off the Harris campaign. He has pissed off the rest of the labor movement and his union allies. He has pissed off the most politically astute segment of his own membership,” In These Times said. As a result, he “looks weak, since his own locals staged a backlash against him.” All this comes just weeks after O’Brien “ignited an internal rebellion” for his RNC speech, Rolling Stone said. At the tip of that rebellion is Teamsters Vice President-At-Large John Palmer‘s newly created campaign to oust O’Brien for having “promised a more engaged leadership and a more militant union” while delivering instead a “PR blast furnace of misinformation and betrayal.”

Former Teamster boss and General President Emeritus Jim Hoffa, son of famed union figure Jimmy Hoffa, has been similarly critical of his successor’s “failure of leadership,” issuing his own endorsement of Harris in a statement last week.

Where do the Teamsters — and both political parties — go from here?

Should Democrats win in November, O’Brien will have to “try to rebuild all of these bridges that have been burned” both within and beyond the Teamsters union itself, In These Times said. And if the Republicans win,” being Trump’s buddy is not going to save you from the end of the NLRB [National Labor Relations Board] and a return to pre-New Deal hostility to all forms of union power.” The non-endorsement is “plainly shocking and a lose-lose” situation for the union, said Slate. “As the only union out of the nation’s 10 largest unions not to endorse Harris, the Teamsters made the mistake of taking the Democrats for granted.”

The Teamsters’ national non-endorsement, as well as local chapter support for Harris is “unlikely to affect the election, at least not by itself,” said Georgetown University Professor Hans Noel to U.S. News and World Report. “More likely, it could have contributed to the sense people have of who the candidates are and who appeals to them.”

Ultimately, the Democrats should be “taking a step back and saying something’s wrong” for having missed an endorsement opportunity, O’Brien said to The Boston Globe. Conversely, for a GOP that brags about being the party for workers of America, this is an opportunity to not just talk about it but to prove it.”