Teamster President Gets His Scab On
Sean O'Brien's speech at the RNC ... is not helpful.
On Monday, in a move widely criticized by union members and labor advocates across the country, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien spoke to the Republican National Convention. He was very well received there, likely because he spent at least half of his speech talking about how lovely it was for Donald Trump — who, notably, stacked the National Labor Relations Board with anti-union activists, stacked the courts with anti-labor judges, and overall supported policies and tax breaks that helped the rich and hurt the working class — to have invited him to come speak.
Also because, while Republicans may hate what unions actually do, they love it when members of groups they have historically screwed turn around and support them anyway. What better way to totally “own the libs” than to say “Look! We’ve spent decades weakening unions with Right-To-Work-For-Less laws and opposing any raise to the minimum wage and this union guy loves us!”
O’Brien’s speech itself was mostly about him giving the speech. How meta!
“Several months ago,” he said, “I asked the RNC and the DNC for the opportunity to speak. To be frank, when President Trump invited me to speak at this convention there was political unrest on the Left and on the Right. Hard to believe! Anti-union groups demanded the president rescind his invitation [no reaction from the audience], the Left called me a traitor [pause for boos] and this is precisely why it's so important for me to be here today. Think about this, think about this — the Teamsters are doing something correct if the extremes in both parties think I shouldn't be on this stage.”
First of all — those people not “the extremes in both parties.” They are regular-ass Democrats and, frankly, your standard “Fuck The Poor” Republicans. As objectionable as I may find those Republicans, they are relatively mild in comparison to the Actual Nazis the party now embraces so wholeheartedly.
Second of all, the man has no business bringing the rest of the Teamsters into this when so many are the very “extremists” who were disgusted by his decision to speak at the RNC.
“We will not allow the working-class labor movement to be destroyed by a scab masquerading as a pro-union advocate after doing everything in his power to destroy the very fabric of unions,” James Curbeam, the national chairman of the Teamsters National Black Caucus, wrote in a statement back when O’Brien first started his bromance with Trump.
Dissatisfaction with O’Brien is nothing new. Since January of 2023, Teamsters have been voicing their criticism of O’Brien’s leadership on the teamsterlink.org forum. When he found out about that, O’Brien actually enlisted known union-busting firm Nixon Peabody (which also counts Donald Trump as a client) to try to take it down.
In his speech, O’Brien was also sure to give Trump the requisite tongue bath, effusively praising him for being such a very very very tough guy.
Trump had the backbone to open the doors to this Republican convention and that's unprecedented. No other nominee in the race would have invited the Teamsters into this arena. Now, you can have whatever opinion you want, but one thing is clear: President Trump is a candidate who is not afraid of hearing from new loud and often critical voices …
I’m sorry, what?
And I think we all can agree, whether people like them or they don't like him, in light of what happened to him on Saturday he has proven to be one tough SOB.
Perhaps I’d be more inclined to think he is a real tough SOB, had I not once pierced ears at Claire’s for a living, but I don’t think so.
In a particularly baffling move, O’Brien began praising the Republican politicians he felt were coming around in terms of support for labor. Remember Markwayne Mullin, the Oklahoma Senator with whom he nearly got into fisticuffs with last year?
“Now this will shock you,” he said, “This will shock you. To paraphrase Senator Markwayne Mullin, it's time for both both sides of Congress to stand their butts up.”
More shocking than that, I’d say, is that he followed that right up with, “It needs to be easier for companies to remain in America” — clearly designed to appeal to those who want lower taxes and fewer regulations for companies, but who would also like to pretend that the reason they want those things is because they support workers, not because they love greedy corporations. That is not a pro-worker statement. O’Brien knows that companies manufacture goods overseas because they are greedy.
O’Brien presumably also know that Joe Biden’s CHIPS and Science Act has led to $270 billion in manufacturing investments so far, and 36,000 new manufacturing jobs. Right here. In America.
Look, I am fully on Team I Don’t Care How You Get Here (Get Here If You Can) when it comes to getting support and help for things I think are important. I have zero qualms about working with “the enemy” in order to get shit done. For instance, you will not to see me out here complaining that Republicans in Oklahoma are trying to help get Richard Glossip off death row — because I do understand that every once in a while, Jem and The Holograms have to team up with The Misfits in order to stop an evil magician’s assistant from disappearing people! Or something to that effect.
This, however, was very much not that. It is very unlikely that Republicans are going to turn around and suddenly start supporting labor en masse, so all he did was go up there like a fool and sell out thousands of workers across the US for some rather tepid clapping.
Republicans want union support not because they support workers or support the existence of unions (certainly Donald Trump doesn’t), but because they like the aesthetics. They want to seem cool and pro-working class, as that will make it even easier for them to pass legislation designed to benefit the rich. Also because they want to “own the libs” and be able to say “See! The unions like us!”
And none of that is going to actually help any workers, anywhere.
This is a revolting dereliction of duty. Doing this, he is outright telling working class whites that he believes Republicans are on their side, which most unions know is categorically false. He's no better now than a corporate CEO paying his workers nothing while taking a big fat salary/bonus and then - when workers get upset - claiming the GOP is a party better equipped to undo the damage of the very con game they perpetrated (but neatly blame on Dems and the government).
Oh thank fuck, I thought it was the other Shawn, Fain, who had decided to abandon any pretense of principles and whore himself out to the GQP. Fuck you, Sean O.