Watching International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) president Sean O’Brien headline the first night of the Republican National Convention (RNC) last week raised a lot of questions. Delegates of the party, whose platform is devoted to union busting and redistributing wealth upward, were noticeably quiet during much of the union leader’s speech. The White House, which passed a $36 billion bailout to save the pensions of some 350,000 Teamster members following a party-line vote — meaning that not a single Republican voted in favor of the bill — is reportedly fuming. Talking heads sounded downright baffled in their on-air analysis.
They’re not the only ones. Some union leaders have taken issue with O’Brien’s presence at the gathering of anti-union true believers. Even as the GOP platform consists of a laundry list of union-busting policies —- Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s nine-hundred-page wish list should Donald Trump retake the White House, aspires to eliminate overtime pay laws, public-sector unions, health and safety protections, and proscriptions on child labor — the party is trying to rebrand itself in a populist light, hoping to gain workers’ votes. Much of the labor movement has been united in denying the GOP the chance to use them as props toward that end, but O’Brien’s presence at the RNC, even without offering an official endorsement, gave the party precisely the type of photo op it had been looking for.
“It’s disappointing to see a national labor leader speak like that at the GOP convention,” Matthew Biggs, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, told the Washington Post. As AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler put it, “Donald Trump and J. D….
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Auteur: Alex N. Press
