I know the DNC isn’t exactly a pro-union party, but the GOP is an outright anti-union party. I am curious why the Teamsters went with this move, perhaps they want increased protectionism to fight outsourcing of jobs? But the Teamsters are largely truckers, ie you cannot outsource these jobs.
Very odd choice.
It’s a bizarre thing, but union workers are often conservatives who completely ignore the anti-union sentiments of the GOP. They think the only union in the world that should exist is their own, and no others.
This is how the GOP is able to convince unions to vote against their own interests. The GOP will tell a union to its face how important it is, earning their votes. Then, once elected, pass legislation harming that same union.
The GOP has also successfully gaslit their base into believing the two best things for unions are controlling immigration and “tax cuts”.
One of those is actually true though
Which one?
Strict immigration controls. Workers have the best leverage for negotiations when there are no alternative sources of labor for corporations to scab with, and what group makes a better scab than disorganized, desperate, immigrants who probably lack the qualifications (education, experience, language) to enter a proper union?
Make no mistake, no one wants mass immigration more than the owner class.
That seems to make sense until you think about the additional growth in demand required to avoid industry shutdowns that is almost solely down to immigration, since the US birth rate is like 1.8 per woman.
Multinationals are happy to move the jobs to Mexico or Vietnam or China; they don’t need to employ immigrants in the US to lower labor costs.
Immigrant labor is actually cheaper when immigration is tightly controlled, at least it is in the US where “restricted” really just means more illegal immigrants rather than fewer overall. When you let people in legally, they’re documented, unions can actually reach out to them, and they are protected by things like minimum wage.
Illegal immigrants are not.
Something like 70% of “illegals” in the US are illegally here for less than half the year. It’s agricultural workers who just don’t go home when the season ends.
These people do nothing to harm the 7% of private employees who are already in unions.
I’m talking about the best interests of existing union workers.
Have you spoken to many on-the-ground union workers?
When you let people in legally, they’re documented, unions can actually reach out to them, and they are protected by things like minimum wage.
This is exactly what those people are opposed to. They want their Unions to be exclusive with a small labor pool. Less workers + good Union support = more money per worker. There are obviously some exceptions.
This is a notoriously difficult thing to prove out either way in data, and I’m sure it varies situationally.
The Mariel Boatlift natural experiment did not demonstrate a decrease in wages or increase in unemployment. It makes sense: immigrants both work and consume (i.e., create demand). Unless every immigrant happens to work in the same industry/union, the sum total of immigrants may create demand for labor equal to or greater than they fill.
It also may have the impact you’re suggesting. But it doesn’t have to be zero sum. And, understandably, people only remember when they lost a job potentially tied to immigrant labor. Nobody asks if the job they’re applying to was created due to demand immigrants added to the economy (and how could a company know that?).
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Worked in many union shops as a degree operational support function. Typical union front line are dumb fuck conservatives with let’s go Brandon bumper stickers. They’re making $45/hr and don’t realize they’re supporting the party that wants them making $14/hr like the warehouse next to theirs.
As someone who worked in a union I can vouch for this ^
Most of the guys I worked with don’t even like the union they are in, they felt they were cheated into giving their money away for “no backup”
When in reality these guys would have lost their jobs YEARS AGO but because the union defends them against management, but because these guys can’t do what ever the hell they want (ie call in 80 out of 90 days, taking 1 hour breaks, having todo what their job description says) they just don’t care…
They also think “They’ll never out source our jobs, or robots can’t replace us!” When in fact management DID do that years ago but the Union won in deliberations and everyone seems to have forgotten.
I hate this timeline
I swear people are so goddamn dumb…
Fuck I just looked for work yesterday and found a union job pushing a pallet jack around for an overnight position: 60-75k!!
Every single other similar non union job: best I can do is 35k
Most people only consider a few key stances when deciding on a candidate. The GOP is anti-union but that may not be what is most important to truckers in a union.
The truckers themselves, sure. But the union as an organization should care.
I do generally think it’s more of a case where American workers are often reactionary due to America’s overall circumstances and Material Conditions in the broader geopolitical landscape, than anything else. Nationalism is a big thing in America, Union or not.
Imperialism also inflates Worker’s living standards, as well as keeping a domestic underclass of immigrants willing to work for the barest wages via threat of expulsion. Unions can often be anti-immigration because of this, additionally adding to reactionary rhetoric among unions.
The secret ingredient is racism
Thirteen former Black and Hispanic employees for the Teamsters International Union filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against the union and its president, Sean O’Brien, alleging racial discrimination over their firings after O’Brien assumed the helm in March 2022.
…
The lawsuit claimed that “rather than maintaining or increasing diversity at Teamsters, IBT [International Brotherhood of Teamsters] fired more than a dozen people of color and turned the Organizing Department from a diverse department into a majority white department”.
The terminations “set back the Organizing Department’s goals of effectively recruiting and organizing non-whites”, it alleged, “in favor of bolstering the majority white membership and leadership of the union. In total, Teamsters terminated 72.73% of the department’s staffers who were people of color, while firing only 28.57% of white staffers. Teamsters then proceeded to hire new staff members who were 73.33% white.”
The lawsuit also claimed that O’Brien “publicly humiliated” the plaintiffs in the case, claiming they were fired because they were “bad apples” and were “lazy” in their work.
e; alright, since someone else brought it up, breaking the railroad strike in 2022 probably didn’t do Biden any favors, but the only difference between what Biden did there and what Trump would have done is Trump probably would’ve tried to find a way to have a SWAT team raid union offices or some crap when he did it, and no union president (whose whole job is dealing with political coalitions and compromises) is going to be dumb enough not to know this, so I maintain racism is the only thing that explains O’Brien’s behavior.
e2; Also, every other union saw what Biden did with the rail strike, and y’know what a ton of them did? Endorsed him because they’re not getting anyone better this election and they know it.
I can’t even think of a GOP person who wants unions to be a thing.
He didn’t actually endorse Trump or Vance which is key. If he had, well, fuck him. But he demanded concessions.
That said: more than anything if you look at the crowd you’ll see the remarkable difference between the ruling class attending and the working class base that make up the GOP. That was a speech to the GOP’s working class base to make demands.
I have strong doubts if it will be fruitful, but I’m willing to see it out. Took some balls to make that speech without endorsing anyone.
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When the fuck has a “business man” ever given a shit about anything but money?
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With questionable situations like this I take into account two possibilities:
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“We shall do this thing unless a thing happens that convinced us not too!”
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Hail Hydra!
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Because he may be better, but he’s still not good.
Sheeps voting for foxes. What could go wrong?
In the 1980 election, the PATCO (Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization) union endorsed Reagan. He fired them all in 1981.
Well deserved, I’d say.
The Teamsters have lost their fucking minds. When does it ever make sense for labor to side with the party of trickle down economics?
Getting in bed early with the ruling class. Hoping to get better treatment when they literally (not figuratively) enslave the working class.
Also greed and a dollop of racism.
Still gonna be a slave, my dude.
Vichy Union
I am gratified to see how upvoted this is
How the fuck?!?
He didn’t endorse the GOP, which I thought had happened at first. But it was more of a pro labor speech in the belly of the beast. Kind of wild.
You could see the division within the working class attendees and the elitists, with the latter squirming.
The crowd booed Mitch McConnell, for context.
Anyone that watched that speech knows he didn’t give an endorsement of the GOP. The speech was largely pro labor, which both parties have ignored.
The visible confusion to outright discomfort was rather fun to witness, especially from Trump and Vance. JD was sweatin.
Teamsters were part of the AFL as a “skilled labor union” pre-great-depression. What’s a “skilled laborer”? You can usually tell by their gender and skin color. Teamsters were also anti-communist and had several leaders who were anti-strikes. The Teamsters were a milquetoast union option that the bosses preferred to a real union as a compromise with organizing workers. They grew quickly.
Merging with the CIO cleaned a lot of this up. The symbol of the AFL-CIO is that of a white hand labeled “AFL” shaking hands with a black hand labeled “CIO”.
Teamsters historically have been an imperfect “foot-in-the-door” union. Something to begin the process of organizing and collective bargaining and giving workers a voice, while being willing to compromise to keep power and stay alive. Don’t look to the teamsters if you want radical change. Look to them to expand the reach of labor unions to white, blue-collar workers that are skeptical of more radical/socialist unions.
Guess they didn’t like biden fucking over unions
I love when someone tees up this stuff
So one of Biden’s FIRST actions in office was to fire the piece of shit that Trump put in charge of the NLRB, short cutting the normal procedure for it which actually caused a little bit of a fight, and then to put in a whole bunch of actually pro-labor people. They’ve been backstopping all these pretty remarkable union gains that have been happening the last few years.
The Teamsters, for whatever stupid/corrupt reason, are pretty much the only union that hasn’t come out swinging hard for Biden in the election, because unlike the media they are aware of how much things have been changing for them in the last few years and want it to continue instead of Trump putting Margaret Thatcher in charge of the NLRB of whatever the fuck he wants to do instead.
Oh, and also he broke a rail strike that would have caused some inflation (which I know the media and the people on Lemmy would have been super understanding of the full context of and wouldn’t have caused any problems), and then once no one was paying attention anymore, his administration kept working the issue and got the workers the sick days they were striking for in the first place. So you I guess you do have a point that he’s horrible. I take it all back.
I have another good one very applicable to the teamsters union, Biden and democrats saved their pension fund.
Pensions that 360,000 retired teamster union workers were relying on.
I really doubt Republicans would have lifted a finger. Probably would have just laughed as one of the largest unions in America collapsed.
Heck here’s some more good union news from Democrats. The new regulations and pro labor leadership of the nlrb have helped increase union election success rate to 74%, it’s highest level in at least 15 years. It brought back over 8,000 workers that had been unjustly fired from their work places as retaliation for unionizing activities.
The contrast with Republicans couldn’t be starker. Project 2025 recommends firing general counsel and leadership of the NLRB “day one,” purging existing civil servants so they can hire their own anti union sycophants, and passing new regulations to make it easier to dissolve unions and harder to form them.
In response to your second paragraph, someone posted above that it’s racism. The Teamsters, at least this… Uh governing body?.. Fired a number of people in leadership, 3/4 of them racial minorities. When they rehired for these newly opened positions only 1/4 of those hired were racial minorities.
Sick nasty
Thanks for your post, it’s well written.
Oh, and also he broke a rail strike that would have caused some inflation (which I know the media and the people on Lemmy would have been super understanding of the full context of and wouldn’t have caused any problems), and then once no one was paying attention anymore,
The railroad in question reached an agreement with some but not all of their unions to give them some of the sick days they had been asking for, Biden’s administration had no official role in it. Moreover, saying unions can’t strike when it’s economically or politically inconvenient is tantamount to saying that can’t strike at all. There’s a reason hundreds of labor historians wrote Biden and his labor secretary an open letter condemning them for what they did with this strike.
Of course, anyone saying they would have gotten any better treatment under a Republican administration is delusional or lying, and there is some pretty smoking gun evidence of racism from this particular union president (see: my other comment in this thread), which is probably why basically every other union has endorsed Biden except this one (like, unions are savvy political organizations that know to not make the perfect the enemy of the good, they do it all the time), but the fact is on at least one occasion when some unions needed Biden to stand up for them he threw them straight under the bus, and acting like he didn’t or it’s no big deal is extremely unhelpful to Biden’s reelection efforts.
Biden’s administration had no official role in it
Hm… I think you might be right. The White House sort of took credit for it, and I thought I remembered that they were in on some of the negotiations and I’ve been saying they were, but everything I can find now seems to indicate that it was just the unions pressuring the railroads. I can’t find anything to indicate that Biden’s people were involved.
Moreover, saying unions can’t strike when it’s economically or politically inconvenient is tantamount to saying that can’t strike at all. There’s a reason hundreds of labor historians wrote Biden and his labor secretary an open letter condemning them for what they did with this strike.
100%. I agree. Like I say, my personal feeling is that, if the workers want to strike, then fuck the economy. If the economy tanks and we get some level of “oh god I’m really struggling with the price of hot dogs / with how my stocks are doing,” then maybe all of those people who are unhappy about that happening should live for a year in the railroad workers’ shoes.
I’m just saying, it’s extremely relevant what all other actions Biden did for unions when it wasn’t the whole economy at stake, and that I kind of get why he did it. I’m not saying I think that’s the right way for the US government to react to a big rail strike or that the Biden administration is a good ending point for progress.
acting like he didn’t or it’s no big deal is extremely unhelpful to Biden’s reelection efforts.
Fair enough. Acting like the other 95% of his union actions didn’t happen is also unhelpful to Biden’s reelection efforts, though.
Regarding Biden and his administration’s involvement, I’ve had to explain this to people before so I keep the info saved:
Biden deserves a lot of the credit for achieving this goal for us,” Russo said. “He and his team continued to work behind the scenes to get all of rail labor a fair agreement for paid sick leave
Got it. Yeah. I thought I had seen something like that. I just couldn’t find it on the spot just now when looking for it.
and then once no one was paying attention anymore, his administration kept working the issue and got the workers the sick days they were striking for in the first place.
some of the workers got some of their demands. if they’d been able to bring the rail to a halt, they might have gotten it all.
Let’s take all that “how DARE Biden let there be inflation, doesn’t he understand my grocery bill” energy and apply it to this here comment right here
Honestly, in terms of my own personal beliefs, I agree with you. I think if the workers that make the US economy operate decide to bring it to its knees until it starts treating them like humans again, fuckin God bless ‘em and I’ll start eating ramen and eggs until they’re done. I just think it’s a little much to ask a US President to commit the political suicide that would be allowing that to happen (in particular because, given how eager people are to blame him for inflation that wasn’t his fault, I don’t think they would react well to a big economic disruption and lots of inflation that actually was squarely his “fault”).
i don’t give any credence to any argument that involves inflation. i don’t believe anyone makes any decision that causally increases or decreases the buying power of a dollar, except perhaps the buyer and seller in any transaction, but only within the confines of that transaction, anyway. i do care about people being able to overthrow the capitalist system and the president stepping in and saying “no” is fucking infuriating.
i don’t believe anyone makes any decision that causally increases or decreases the buying power of a dollar, except perhaps the buyer and seller in any transaction, but only within the confines of that transaction, anyway.
I think we’re done here
oh, ok.
Even though you don’t like capitalism, you would benefit from reading some basics on economics.
this is posturing and rhetoric. it is not evidence of a natural phenomenon called “inflation”
If a country’s monetary authority decides to increase the money in circulation (like what happened during Covid), which lowers demand because there’s now more of it, that’s certainly somebody influencing inflation. I’d like to hear how it’s not.
that’s story-telling. it’s a myth. everyone could have chosen not to accept higher prices, or levy them. then what? did “inflation” still happen?
It’s not that hard. Think of it in terms other than money. You have a stick of gum. You want to trade this for a lollipop. That’s fine, you find someone with a lollipop and make the trade.
Next day, someone comes along with an infinite lollipop-making machine. People start handing out lollipops. The same guy from yesterday comes to you and wants to buy 15 more sticks of gum with his fresh lollipops he just got from the lollipop printer. Well, turns out, you’ve been amassing lollipops too because of this. You now demand 10 lollipops for the stick of gum, because you have the last three sticks and everybody including you are swimming in lollipops.
You’d have to be a complete idiot to continue selling sticks of gum for one lollipop, and if you are, you are definitely going to be taken advantage of and are going to get cleaned out of all your gum.
Economic forces don’t just stop existing when capitalism does. People will continue to be people. I say this as an anarchist.
Most pro union president ever wasn’t pro union enough for you huh
by what metric was he “most” pro-union?
If only someone had linked to some articles
this is handwaving.
edit:
this user has, to their credit, probably given me every relevant search result they could scrounge up to try to support their position, but have not actually provided the metric by which we could evaluate whether biden has been the most pro-union president ever. i suspect it is because no such metric exists, and, as such, can never be used to measure the actions of any president. instead of acknowledging that they are simply spreading rhetoric-as-fact, they have chosen to take a sarcastic, patronizing tone. feel free to think what you want about unions, presidential candidates, and whatnot, but please recognize that this claim in particular is purely rhetorical and not one that can be substatiated by any evidence.
What a polite request! As a matter of fact, I’d be happy to cut and paste so it’s a little more clear for people who don’t like clicking links.
“Put us in the group of doubling down unequivocally,” said Brent Booker, president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, which represents some 400,000 U.S. workers in construction and other sectors. “He’s done more for our members than any president in my lifetime.”
“Most of my members are already pretty well-attuned to how Joe Biden feels about labor unions. I don’t doubt [Harris] would support labor unions, but I don’t think she would stand a chance” at winning the election, said Dave Fashbaugh, 59, the business manager of a local chapter of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in Michigan.
Despite the panic set off in much of the party over Biden’s debate performance, union support has not wavered for the president even at the moments of maximum uncertainty. Union endorsements have taken care to stress support for both Biden and Harris, often endorsing the two jointly, and many union officials say publicly they would be as confident in Harris as in Biden.
As Democrats on Capitol Hill convened to discuss their way forward, the AFL-CIO last week put out a statement saying it “Stands in Strong Solidarity With Biden-Harris Ticket.” The nation’s preeminent labor organization endorsed Biden in June 2022, the earliest it has ever weighed in on a presidential race.
The Biden administration has gone to enormous lengths to make good on his promise to be the “most pro-union president in history.”
He pushed for key legislation that poured billions of dollars into the creation of union jobs in clean energy, semiconductors and other industries. He has appointed labor allies to key leadership positions and offered unions pension bailouts, apprenticeship funds and policies that have made it easier for workers to organize.
“President Biden’s record of delivering for working people stands for itself,” David McCall, president of the United Steelworkers, said Tuesday in a written statement. His “transformative infrastructure investments … are creating good, union jobs” and “his worker-centered trade policy … is rebuilding supply chains.”
IDK, I stopped with that much; that seems like plenty. Want me to copy and paste some from the NLRB article, though? There’s a little bit of history and explanation of how he made it happen that might be interesting.
“He’s done more for our members than any president in my lifetime.”
that’s not “ever”, and it’s not quantified anyway.
your second quote has no meaningful metric at all about biden, only juxtaposing him against harris
the third says he’s been trying to make good on his campaign promise, but it does not actually show the bar for how to become the most pro-union president, nor how biden has approached (or passed) that measure.
the fourth is some platitudes.
if a claim is to be made, it should be able to be evidenced. otherwise, it’s just rhetoric.
Idk about ever, since the neoliberal turn in the 80s your probably right, but that ignores FDR who set the foundations for the NLRB and fought hard to get the courts to get them any sort of power. Bidens been a breath of fresh air from the 40 year onslaught against unions but he doesn’t compare as well to presidents before that in the new deal era. Even Nixon got OSHA and ERISA signed, granted he had a more functional congress.
He’s not going to endorse Trump, but he did give the most pro union speech at the RNC in our countries history. What he did took guts, and it opened a line of communication across the aisle. We need more of that not less.
