by Edward Ring
The fact that the Republican National Committee invited Teamsters President Sean O’Brien to speak at their convention last week, and the fact that he showed up and delivered an impassioned address to a mostly supportive audience, is yet another example of a historic political realignment.
O’Brien’s presence at the convention was his acknowledgement that support for Donald Trump is higher among union households than among the general public. An ABC News poll conducted earlier this year had Trump beating Biden 50 percent to 41 percent, whereas overall, Biden had 47 percent support to Trump’s 43 percent.
While some of O’Brien’s remarks undoubtedly made some people in the partisan convention audience uncomfortable, the people who might have been the most offended weren’t present—think Romney, Bush, Cheney, and Ryan. And at the very least, as the crowd listened to O’Brien make his points, they must have been thinking that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
More generally, O’Brien must realize that neutrality, if not overt support for Trump’s candidacy, is the only way to avoid becoming dangerously out of touch with his membership. Most unions are out of touch. According to Open Secrets, in the 2023-24 election cycle so far, 87 percent of political contributions from labor interests in federal elections have gone to Democrats and only 13 percent to Republicans. And this despite data that indicates at least half of union households now support Trump.
Trump is aware of this disconnect. During his own remarks at the convention, he called on the United Auto Workers to fire their president, Shawn Fain. And why shouldn’t they? Because the UAW, along with the leadership of almost every union in the United States, has made common cause with the Uniparty on the biggest strategic issues affecting our economy and the well-being of American workers. They have more in common with the agendas of Romney, Bush, Cheney, and Ryan than they do with their own members.
What have America’s union leaders had to say about the uniparty agenda that is crippling the middle class and destroying upward mobility for low-income households? Have they used their political clout to demand an end to uncontrolled illegal immigration? They must understand that if you flood the labor market, you drive down wages. And have they stood up to the climate crisis lobby, a special interest-driven scam that rewards politically connected, rent-seeking corporations and makes the cost of living unaffordable while transferring wealth out of middle- and lower-income communities upwards into the hands of corporations and billionaires?
America’s unions have not demanded we control our borders, and they have not stood up to environmentalist extremism. And while they may have weakly objected to corporate raiders (think Mitt Romney and Bain Capital—a quintessential example) who have used creative financing to take over companies, load them up with debt, sell their assets, move their operations overseas, pay themselves obscene bonuses, and leave in their wake a devastated heartland, they never effectively stopped it from happening. The legacy of that failure—and Romney’s gain—is written on the graves of the millions of Americans who were driven into despair, left unemployed, and without hope, finding deadly solace in fentanyl.
Where were the unions when crony-driven, unregulated neoliberalism gutted our job market and 10 million illegal immigrants poured over open borders to take whatever jobs were left? Where are they now?
While we’re at it, when have American union leaders bothered to criticize the toxic social rhetoric of Democrats, embracing absurd race and gender ideology that is obviously false and deeply offensive to the vast majority of their members?
America’s union leadership has a chance to help put someone who is unabashedly opposed to importing cheap labor and exporting good jobs back into the presidency. Someone who, without reservations, opposes the wealth and power grab that hides behind environmentalism. Someone who obviously cares about the American worker.
Maybe unions won’t find full ideological alignment with Republicans. They would have to acknowledge that small businesses and independent contractors are not fair targets for union recruiting because it does more harm than good to the economy, the workers, the entrepreneurs and owners, and the freedom to innovate. But unions can play a decisive strategic role in fighting neoliberals and globalists and the environmentalist lobby—which defines today’s Democratic politicians and their donors—and by doing so, they can help lower the cost of living and create great job opportunities. That would help all workers in America, including, but not limited to, their own members. Isn’t that their mission? The well-being of all workers?
Finally, America’s private sector unions, starting with the Teamsters and United Auto Workers, ought to recognize by now that they have almost nothing in common with public sector unions. Apart from public safety unions, such as the U.S. Border Patrol union, which has endorsed Trump for president in 2024, most public sector unions are actively working to support the globalist corporate agenda. The powerful teachers unions are pushing divisive race and gender ideology into our K-12 schools, colleges, and universities. They welcome mass immigration at the same time as they indoctrinate new arrivals to resent and fear “white privilege.” They are in lockstep with the environmentalist extremists, and notwithstanding their rhetoric, everything they’re doing signifies complete indifference to the plight of America’s shrinking middle class.
The dirty truth is that public-sector unions win when America fails. They demand more government regulations and government bureaucracies, placing burdens on private sector job creators and discouraging organic private sector solutions to social problems. Then, when their favored programs fail, they demand more taxes, more regulations, more spending, more bureaucracies, more dues-paying public sector union members, and more subsidies for their crony corporate allies in order to supposedly fix the problems that they created. And everything just gets worse. If you want to see this dysfunctional cycle in its end stages, come to California.
Private-sector labor costs are not the primary reason American companies struggle. It’s the regulations and the taxes. Perhaps Sean O’Brien realizes this and knows there’s nothing to lose and everything to gain by supporting the new, reinvented, pro-worker Republican Party. We may hope.
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Edward Ring is a senior fellow of the Center for American Greatness. He is also the director of water and energy policy for the California Policy Center, which he co-founded in 2013 and served as its first president. Ring is the author of Fixing California: Abundance, Pragmatism, Optimism (2021) and The Abundance Choice: Our Fight for More Water in California (2022).
Photo “Sean O’Brien” by International Brotherhood of Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien.
