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KAMALA HARRIS IS WINNING THE TEAMSTERS ENDORSEMENTS THAT REALLY
MATTER  
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John Nichols
September 20, 2024
The Nation
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_ The national leadership may have snubbed her—but Teamsters in the
swing states that will decide the election are backing her all the
way. _

Kamala Harris disembarks from Air Force Two upon arrival at Detroit
Metropolitan Wayne County Airport in Romulus, Michigan, on September
19, 2024, Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images

 

Dire reports
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media outlets that rarely if ever cover organized labor seriously
would have us believe that Vice President Kamala Harris was dealt a
major blow on Wednesday, when Sean O’Brien, the general president of
the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, announced that the union
would not support the Democrat’s candidacy—or that of her
Republican rival, former President Donald Trump. But, as with so many
other issues, it pays to look beyond the headlines on this
story—because, while the Harris campaign may not have won over the
national leadership of the Teamsters in Washington, it has ended up
with something more important: a bonanza of endorsements from
Teamsters units in the battleground states that will decide the
presidential race.

In fact, Harris received so many endorsements from Teamsters joint
councils and union locals in states across the country that her
campaign is now touting endorsements of the Democrat from units
representing more than one million of the labor organization’s 1.3
million members. And they’ve gotten a boost from James P. Hoffa, who
led the union for decades as its general president. Hoffa ripped into
the current leadership, calling the failure to back the Democratic
ticket this year “a critical error and, frankly, a failure of
leadership by Sean O’Brien.”

“This election is too important for our union not to do its duty. We
must take a stand for working Americans,” declared the 83-year-old
Hoffa, who has retained widespread loyalty within the union since he
retired in 2022. “There is only one candidate in this race that has
supported working families and unions throughout their career, and
that is Vice President Kamala Harris.”

The refusal of O’Brien and the Teamsters leadership in Washington to
back Harris was never as big a deal as initial media reports
suggested. Harris already enjoyed the overwhelming support of the
labor movement even while she sought t a formal endorsement from the
Teamsters. Along with an enthusiastic endorsement from the AFL-CIO,
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umbrella organization for 60 national unions, the Democratic ticket
has the backing of the vast majority of unions that matter nationally
and in the swing states—including labor organizations with long
records of doing the heavy lifting at election time, such as the
United Auto Workers, the Steelworkers, AFSCME, the Service Employees,
the American Federation of Teachers, the Painters, the Laborers and
Unite-Here’s Culinary Workers local in Nevada.

Just two weeks ago, with barely a whimper from cable networks,
newspapers of record, or the websites that attempt to cover
politics, the 600,000-member International Association of Machinists,
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union with substantial influence in states from Pennsylvania
to Georgia
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Wisconsin and Arizona, endorsed Harris as “an instrumental leader in
helping President Biden create the most union-friendly administration
in American history.”

That record is one of the reasons why so many of the Teamsters
rank-and-file wanted their leadership to back Harris and her
Democratic running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. It was clear
there were partisan differences within the union, as was indicated by
internal polls showing significant—in some cases, majority—support
for Trump. At the same time, key groups within the union argued that
the best response to these divisions was not to avoid responsibly with
a non-endorsement—and certainly not to back the Republican—but
rather to endorse Harris, mount a major education campaign about her
pro-union, pro-worker record, and rally Teamsters to back her bid.

In August, the Teamsters National Black Caucus
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statement backing the Democrats because of their “unwavering
commitment to workers and their families.” The caucus argued
that “Their records reflect a deep dedication to advancing labor
rights and supporting working-class Americans.” Prominent regional
leaders across the country delivered similar messages, with Josh
Zivalich, the influential president of Teamsters Local 769 in South
Florida, arguing in an August letter to O’Brien—which was sent
after O’Brien’s appearance at the Republican National
Convention—that,  “Vice President Harris has proved herself to
us, especially in that she cast the deciding vote on the
multi-employer pension relief bill, saving the pensions of hundreds of
thousands of Teamsters as you well know.”

In contrast, Trump is seeking the presidency as “one of the most
anti-union, anti-worker politicians in history,” wrote Zivalich,
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explained, “The problem is not that Trump is a Republican, the
problem is he is Anti-Union. Trump’s Administration appointed an
anti-Union Chair of the NLRB [National Labor Relations Board] and
countless other attacks on worker’s rights, including recently
praising Elon Musk for union-busting activities—and you are also
well aware of that. Why is this endorsement even a question? It
shouldn’t be–and nearly every Local Union Leader in the Country
knows it.”

O’Brien rejected that counsel, choosing instead to have the
international union vacate the field for the first time since the
Teamsters sat out the 1996. That year, many unions were frustrated by
the choice between Democratic President Bill Clinton, who had burned
bridges with his support for the North American Free Trade Agreement,
and Republican Senate Leader Bob Dole, another NAFTA backer.

O’Brien tried to suggest
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the choice this year was similarly unclear. But the claim was met with
widespread derision from the union’s most active members. So it was
that, after the international stood down, Teamsters joint councils
and locals across the country rushed to endorse Harris and Walz. On
Wednesday night, the “Teamsters Against Trump” movement asked:
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do you spell momentum? In the last 8 hours, joint councils
representing nearly half a million Teamsters endorsed Harris.” By
mid-day Thursday the union uprising had gone national, with Harris’s
campaign announcing that she had — in barely a day — gained the
backing of regional joint councils and local unions representing
roughly one million Teamsters. “These local Teamsters have committed
to immediately begin knocking doors and engaging in other voter
contact efforts across the battlegrounds, noted the campaign, which
distributed a list of endorsers that spanned the United States,”
announced the Harris camp, which listed endorsements from
the Teamster Retirees organization and the Teamsters National Black
Caucus, along with support from joint councils in Michigan, Wisconsin,
southern Nevada, northern Nevada, western Pennsylvania and northern
West Virginia, Washington and Alaska and Idaho, Minnesota and Iowa and
North Dakota and South Dakota and western Wisconsin, Illinois and
Missouri, as well as major locals in Philadelphia, Boston, Miami, and
New York.

Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Pennsylvania are among the most hotly
contested battleground states of the 2024 presidential race. Having
the support of Teamster joint councils, which are composed of multiple
union locals and have substantial resources, provides a major boost
for the Harris-Walz ticket — especially when that support is this
enthusiastic. Hailing Harris’s work to save union pensions as vice
president in “the most pro-union administration ever,”
Wisconsin’s Joint Council 39 declared,
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President, Kamala Harris will build on those efforts and work with
Congress to pass the PRO Act, ending union some of the most egregious
union busting tactics once and for all. In contrast, Donald Trump
tried to gut workers’ rights as President by appointing union
busters to the NLRB and advocating for (an anti-labor) national
right-to-work (law). Trump’s project 2025 would go even further,
attacking the ability for unions to even have the ability to
organize.”

“This November,” announced the joint council, which represents
15,000 Teamsters in a battleground state where four of the past six
presidential elections have been decided by under 25,000 votes, “we
will work with millions of union workers across the country to defeat
Donald Trump once again, and to send Vice President Harris and
Governor Walz to the White House.” In western Pennsylvania, Carl
Bailey, the president of the 35,000-member Teamsters Joint Council 40,
echoed that fervent desire to defeat Trump, saying, 
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don’t think he cares about working people. He used to brag about
having people fired. My job is to keep people from being fired.”

Such statements are in stark contrast to the muddled message that’s
been sent by the union’s national leadership—and they point to the
bottom-line reality that has emerged from a chaotic week of
speculation about where Harris stands with the Teamsters in
particular, and with organized labor in general: While O’Brien and
the union leadership in DC “has chosen to take a seat on the
sidelines,” as Hoffa puts it, Teamster units across the United
States are in the game – pulling for the Democratic presidential
ticket, as well Senate candidates, in critical battleground states. 

That doesn’t mean that Harris is going to get all the votes of
Teamsters in those states – or nationally. Like most unions, the
Teamsters have plenty of Republican members. What is going to happen,
however, is that Kamala Harris is going to get hundreds of thousands
of Teamster voters — and that some of the most dynamic union
organizing on Harris’s behalf, in the states that matter most, will
be done by Teamsters union locals and joint councils that are working
in solidarity wth the broader labor movement.

Florida’s Josh Zivalich, whose Local 769 gave a strong endorsement
to Harris this week, summed up the sentiments of the union members who
have chosen to engage on behalf of the Democrats by saying, “There
has never been a more obvious choice for the International Brotherhood
of Teamsters in a U.S. presidential race.” 

RELATED: 

What’s Really Going on with the Teamsters and with TDU?
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Tom Leedham and Dan La Botz
CounterPunch May 9, 2024

New York Amazon Delivery Drivers Join the Teamsters in Surge of
Momentum
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Luis Feliz Leon
Labor Notes 9/16/2024

_JOHN NICHOLS is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation. He
has written, cowritten, or edited over a dozen books on topics ranging
from histories of American socialism and the Democratic Party to
analyses of US and global media systems. His latest, cowritten with
Senator Bernie Sanders, is the New York Times bestseller It's OK to
Be Angry About Capitalism
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_Copyright c 2024 THE NATION. Reprinted with permission. May not be
reprinted without permission
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* Kamala Harris
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* Teamsters
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* elections
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* International Association of Machinists
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* National Black Caucus of the International Brotherhood of
Teamsters
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