Teamsters president to address RNC, as GOP leans into populist politics

“You can have whatever opinion you want but one thing is clear: President Trump is a candidate who’s unafraid to hear from new, loud and often critical voices,” O’Brien said to a round of cheers.

O’Brien’s appearance marks an extraordinary departure for one of the country’s most powerful unions that has for decades supported Democrats, at a moment when the GOP is divided over whether to embrace a move toward more populist right-wing politics.

The union president from outside Boston also criticized big business in his speech, including Amazon, Uber and Lyft, for selling out American workers and showered praise on Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) in particular, for being willing to question corporate power.

O’Brien, who was invited to speak by former president Donald Trump, has been wielding the union’s endorsement as political leverage in Washington. Most major unions have rallied behind President Biden, whose administration has gone to great lengths to champion unions.

O’Brien also has requested to speak at the Democratic National Convention in August but has not yet received an invitation, Teamsters spokesperson Kara Deniz told The Washington Post.

The Teamsters, with some 1.3 million members, many across key battleground states, will not be endorsing until after both conventions, Deniz said last week.

O’Brien has explained his decision to wait to endorse this year as an effort to carefully assess the union’s options, saying that his members’ votes “will not be taken for granted.”

Some labor experts say O’Brien could feel pressure to consider the membership’s diverse political leanings, because he won the union’s top office in 2021 after running as a reform candidate who promised more member involvement in union decision-making. O’Brien is also aware that many rank-and-file Teamsters are Republicans — and Trump supporters, experts say.

Trump’s inroads with O’Brien began earlier this year, when the two met privately in January at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate. That meeting outraged some of the union’s left-leaning leaders and members, with one board member calling Trump a “known union buster, scab and insurrectionist.”

The Teamsters president and rank-and-file members met with both Trump and Biden, on separate occasions, at the union’s headquarters in Washington. The union donated $45,000 to the RNC convention fund this year, its first major donation to the GOP in decades.

It also sent $135,000 to the Democratic National Committee last December plus a $15,000 donation in March.

Trump’s announcement Monday that he had selected Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio as his running mate marks another notable move toward the GOP’s embrace of a more right-wing populist agenda that blends a conservative stance on culture war issues with economic nationalism intended to protect American workers from free-trade policies and deindustrialization.

Vance attended an autoworkers’ picket line late last year in Ohio — though he has opposed pro-labor legislation. And Hawley joined strike lines with autoworkers and Teamsters. In return, the Teamsters sent $5,000 to Hawley’s reelection campaign this year.

Trump has called himself “pro-worker,” in an effort to portray himself as a defender of the working class, but he has supported numerous policies that restricted labor’s power. As president, he installed a leader at the National Labor Relations Board whose policies and rulings weakened workers’ rights. Trump has received few union endorsements outside of law enforcement.

Biden, the self-proclaimed “most pro-union president in history,” meanwhile, has made major advances for unions. Many of his policies have benefited the Teamsters, including his nearly $36 billion bailout of a pension in 2022, part of the American Rescue Plan that restored retirement accounts for some 350,000 Teamsters members.