Teamsters President Sean O’Brien spoke at Trump’s Republican National Convention on Monday. This was a bad move. Much of the speech would have been fine if he had delivered it somewhere else. O’Brien railed against corporate greed, singling out Amazon and the private equity vultures that killed Yellow Freight. He called for stronger labor laws. Nobody says that stuff at the Republican convention, so some unionists were pleased to hear righteous themes reach a new audience. But it almost didn’t matter what he said—the far louder message was where he said it.
I worked hard to elect Sean O’Brien. He is the right president for the Teamsters union. Donald Trump is the wrong president for my country—and I will work like hell to defeat him. Labor Notes has chronicled our union’s new militancy, including the UPS contract campaign, aggressive strike action, organizing at Amazon, and more. A Trump victory imperils all of it. In 2020, I was on the verge of losing my pension. Every single Republican Senator opposed the Butch Lewis Emergency Pension Relief Act.
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