Teamsters union boss Sean O’Brien has a speaking slot at the Republican National Convention. Democrats are touting O’Brien’s speaking role as evidence that the Republican Party is embracing Big Labor’s anti-worker policies.
Democrats have it completely backwards. Rank-and-file union workers are voting Republican because of former President Donald Trump’s worker-freedom agenda, not because Republicans are embracing Big Labor’s anti-worker agenda.
While Trump was making life better for American workers as president, O’Brien was spending heavily to undermine his worker-freedom agenda. A new report from the Center for Union Facts, first reported by the Daily Caller News Foundation, shows that the Teamsters spent $9 million on politics between 2019 and 2022.
Of that, a staggering 99% funded Democrat-aligned groups and anti-Trump media outlets. More than $2.6 million in Teamsters political donations went toward registered Democrats and Democratic campaign arms. The Teamsters also funded anti-Trump activist groups that plan to bury a second Trump presidency in litigation.
Given that nearly all of the Teamsters political spending went to Democrats and far-left causes, it would be reasonable to assume that rank-and-file union members uniformly vote Democrat. That is not the case: In 2020, 40% of households with a union member voted for Trump.
If a large – and growing – contingent of union members are voting for Trump, why does nearly 100% of Big Labor’s political spending go towards Democrats? The answer is simple: there is a growing political rift between union leadership and rank-and-file union members.
Big Labor has been one of the Democratic Party’s largest funders for a century. In return, Democrats push policies that force workers into unions. Then, union bosses confiscate money from rank-and-file members in the form of union dues and spend it on Democrats. Rinse and repeat.
Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign threw a wrench in Big Labor’s well-oiled political machine. Trump ran on standing up for American workers, not the union bosses spending their money on Democrat political causes. For the first time in generations, union rank-and-file in previously Democrat strongholds like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin propelled Trump to the Oval Office.
As president, Trump embraced American workers, not the Big Labor structures that stole their money and spent it on Democrats. Trump allowed American workers to keep more of their hard-earned money by significantly cutting their taxes. Trump slashed red tape, allowing businesses to create jobs and grow the economy. Trump rescinded onerous Obama-era restrictions on independent contracting and franchising, giving workers and small businesses more freedom and flexibility. Trump supported right-to-work laws, which prevent employers from forcing employees to join a union as a condition of employment.
In sharp contrast, Biden has governed for union bosses, not union members. All of Biden’s labor agenda has been funded and masterminded by union bosses like O’Brien.
Biden reimposed Obama’s regulations on independent contracting and franchises, and has endorsed workplace harassment by union organizers. Biden has advocated for legislation that would nullify right-to-work laws nationwide, ban independent contracting and force employers to hand over sensitive employee contact information to union organizers.
Biden killed the Keystone XL pipeline on Day One of his presidency, and has continued to attack the oil and gas industry that supports hundreds of thousands of American jobs.
Despite Biden’s best efforts to force workers into unions, private-sector union membership hit an all-time low during his presidency. Workers will continue to flee unions in droves because they are no longer buying what Big Labor is selling.
Big Labor bosses like O’Brien know that the only way that they remain in power is if the government forces workers to unionize. O’Brien is pretending to play footsies with the Republican Party because he wants Republicans to do Big Labor’s bidding. Instead of only relying on Democrats to force workers into unions, O’Brien wants both parties to force workers into unions.
Republicans that embrace Big Labor’s agenda make a serious political miscalculation. Union workers have trended Republican since 2016 – in defiance of union bosses – because they want more workplace freedom and more money in their pockets. Trump shrewdly harnessed this sentiment in 2016, governed on it during his presidency, and continues to double down on worker freedom in 2024.
Making the Republican labor platform identical to the Democrat labor platform would only serve to undermine Trump’s hard-fought gains and alienate newly-minted Republican voters.
If O’Brien and his Big Labor cohorts were serious about embracing Trump, they would not have spent over $9 million of their members’ money attacking Trump and promoting Democrats in recent years. Instead of believing that Big Labor bosses are on their team, Republicans should continue to court union workers by running on Trump’s worker-freedom agenda.
Tom Hebert is Director of Competition and Regulatory Policy at Americans for Tax Reform and executive director of the Open Competition Center.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Featured image credit: Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien (Screen Capture/CSPAN)
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