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UNIONS WHO THINK REPUBLICANS ARE WARMING TO LABOR RIGHTS ARE GETTING
PLAYED  
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Steven Greenhouse
July 23, 2024
The Guardian
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_ The Teamsters president took a gamble and accepted Trump’s
invitation to speak at the Republican convention – it backfired _

‘Sean O’Brien hoped to move Trump toward labor, but he seemed to
forget that Trump is dyed-in-the-wool anti-union.’, Chip Somodevilla
// The Guardian

 

When Teamsters president Sean O’Brien spoke at the Republican
national convention on opening night, it seemed to hint that the
Republican party – long a lapdog for corporate interests – was
turning an important page and would stop being so hostile toward labor
unions.
 

But when Donald Trump
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divisive acceptance speech three days later, he seemed to forget he
was supposed to act lovey-dovey toward labor unions. The former
president essentially kicked the United Auto Workers (UAW) in the
teeth, and the UAW fired back by calling Trump the “mascot and
lapdog” of billionaires.

 
 
During the unscripted, let-it-rip part of his speech, Trump lashed
out at the UAW [[link removed]],
seeming to suggest that the UAW was responsible for automakers
building plants in Mexico. That seemed rather unhinged because the UAW
wishes that it – and not profit-maximizing corporations – had the
power to decide where plants are built. Even more bizarrely, Trump
said the UAW “ought to be ashamed” about Chinese automakers’
plans to build plants in Mexico. (Trump offered no explanation why the
UAW was responsible for any of this.)
 

Trump then directed his fire at the UAW’s president, Shawn Fain,
saying he “should be fired immediately”, even though Fain’s
stature and popularity have soared across the US because he led last
fall’s victorious strike against Detroit’s automakers.

Fain struck back
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next day, saying: “Last night, Donald Trump once again attacked our
union on a national stage.” He said Trump “stands for everything
we stand against”. Fain asked why, when General Motors closed its
huge plant in Lordstown, Ohio, in 2019, “when Trump was president
and our members were on strike for 40 days, he said nothing and did
nothing”.

Fain didn’t stop there, saying: “Trump doesn’t want to protect
American auto workers. He wants to pad the pockets of the ludicrously
wealthy auto executives. He wants autoworkers to shut up and take
scraps, not stand up and fight for more.”

Fain no doubt remembers Trump’s nasty history of insulting and
attacking labor leaders. In 2018, the then president tweeted
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an attack against Richard Trumka, the late, highly regarded
secretary-general of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s main labor
federation. Trump, whose administration took a myriad of anti-worker
actions
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suggested that Trumka was sabotaging US workers. Trump even
once blamed
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Green, the president of the UAW local in Lordstown, for the closure of
the huge Lordstown plant that Green fought so hard to save. 

“America’s autoworkers aren’t the problem. Our union isn’t the
problem,” Fain said
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Friday. “Corporate greed and the billionaires’ hero, mascot and
lapdog, Donald Trump, are the problem. Don’t get played by this scab
billionaire.”

Trump’s rant against the UAW indicated that O’Brien’s maneuver
was failing. O’Brien had hoped that by speaking at the convention
and giving Republicans
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credibility, the Republicans and Trump would return the favor by
making nice to unions.

WHEN TRUMP GAVE HIS HUGELY DIVISIVE ACCEPTANCE SPEECH, HE SEEMED TO
FORGET HE WAS SUPPOSED TO ACT LOVEY-DOVEY TOWARD LABOR UNIONS

But then Trump proceeded to attack the UAW, partly out of pique that
it hasn’t endorsed him. During the UAW’s big strike last
September, Trump spoke to some workers and supporters in Michigan and
said the UAW’s “leadership should endorse me, and I will not say a
bad thing about them again”. In other words, endorse me, or I’ll
slam you and slime you.

In his acceptance speech, Trump said: “Every single auto worker,
union and non-union, should be voting for Donald Trump because we’re
going to bring back car manufacturing.” Unfortunately for Trump,
many auto workers remember that in 2017, Trump bemoaned Ohio’s loss
of manufacturing jobs and assured
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crowd in Youngstown: “They’re all coming back ... We’re going to
get those jobs coming back.” But Trump’s promise was empty; those
jobs didn’t come back under his administration.

Unlike the Teamsters, most major labor unions endorsed Joe Biden
before he withdrew from the race, with many unions saying he was the
most pro-union president in history. In a CNN interview after his
speech, O’Brien agreed, saying
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definitely the most pro-labor president we’ve ever had.”

O’Brien was trying to both court and bring a big shift in a party
that has long been extremely hostile toward unions. O’Brien praised
several Republicans who had taken some baby steps to show support of
unions; he noted that Missouri senator Josh Hawley had walked a
Teamster picket line
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O’Brien failed to mention that Biden was the first sitting US
president ever to join a picket line. He also failed to mention that
Hawley scored 0% in 2023 on the AFL-CIO’s legislative scorecard or
that Senator JD Vance, Trump’s supposedly pro-worker running mate,
also scored zero.

O’Brien’s gamble backfired. Many labor leaders condemned him for
undermining the Democrats and helping Trump. John Palmer, a Teamsters
vice-president, was so angry at O’Brien for playing footsie with
Trump that he announced he would run against
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for the Teamsters’ presidency in 2026.

The Teamsters hierarchy defended O’Brien’s appearance by insisting
he wanted both major parties to hear pro-union, pro-worker messages
and shouldn’t be beholden to one party. To be sure, O’Brien hoped
to move Trump toward labor, but he seemed to forget that Trump is
dyed-in-the-wool anti-union. Last year, in a “message to America’s
auto workers
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Trump said: “You should not pay your dues” and the UAW “was
selling you to hell”. Trump once undercut unions by suggesting that
midwestern automakers
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their plants to the south to lower their wages. Trump’s appointees
to the US supreme court and National Labor Relations Board issued one
anti-worker, anti-union decision after another.

Many workers, indeed many union members, have embraced Trump because
he tells them he that feels their resentments, hears their grievances.
Trump has responded to those grievances by bashing immigrants, China
and elites. But such bashing has done next to nothing to truly help
workers.

The US’s workers need leaders who push to lift their wages, increase
worker safety, make childcare more affordable and fight to make unions
stronger. Trump is in no way such a leader. As president, he did
nothing to raise the minimum wage or make childcare more affordable.
He weakened safety protections for many workers. His administration
moved in dozens of ways to weaken labor unions.

It’s time that US workers get wise to the fact Trump is not their
friend.

_[STEVEN GREENHOUSE, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, is an
American labor and workplace journalist and writer.]_

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* Sean O'Brien; Teamsters and Trump; Republican Convention;
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