The International Brotherhood of Teamsters does not endorse anyone for president.
The union’s board said Wednesday that it found “no definitive support among members for either party’s nomination,” and therefore decided not to endorse either Democratic candidate, vice president Kamala Harrisor her GOP opponent, former President Donald Trump.
“Unfortunately, neither major candidate was able to make serious commitments to our union to ensure that the interests of working people always come before those of big business,” union President Sean O’Brien said in a statement.
While the 1.3 million-member union isn’t formally endorsing anyone, not supporting it could be seen as a rejection of Harris. Organized labor, after all, supports Democrats, and most of the largest unions quickly threw their weight behind Harris’ candidacy when she replaced President Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket.
The Teamsters also gave Trump a boost by publishing figures showing that their members favored Trump over Harris in recent internal polls. The Trump campaign quickly announced the news in a press release.
O’Brien has said the Teamsters will not automatically endorse Democratic politicians, and he made many members angry and leaders in his own union by cultivating a relationship with Trump. The Teamsters leader even took the highly unusual step of seeking and accepting a speaking slot at this summer’s Republican National Convention, praising Trump as “a tough bastard.”
“I refuse to continue doing the same things that my predecessors did,” O’Brien said in his speech, at times criticizing both Democrats and Republicans. “Today, the Teamsters are here to say that we are beholden to no one and no party.”
Several local Teamsters chapters, including the black faction, have come out in support of Harris, saying another Trump presidency would be terrible for unions.
The former Republican president had a undeniably anti-labor record during his first term, when he weakened workplace protections, attacked federal employee unions, and made it harder for workers to organize. Trump has given no indication that he would back down from these policies in a second term.
Meanwhile, many labor historians agree that the Biden-Harris administration has most pro-union record at least since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Biden has called on corporations to bust unions, has walked a picket line in support of strikers, and has created a very progressive National Labor Relations Board that makes it easier to form unions.
The current administration can also take credit for protecting the pensions of thousands of Teamsters through a $86 billion pension rescue which received no Republican support. The legislation passed the Senate on party lines in 2021 thanks to Harris’s tie-breaking vote.
