The Teamsters Are Fighting With Their President

Not everyone at the powerful union is happy over president Sean O’Brien’s embrace of the Republican Party.

Teamsters president Sean O’Brien frustrated many members of the powerful union when he agreed to speak at the Republican National Convention on Monday night. This was the first time in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters’ 121-year history that its leader spoke at the convention of the party that is overall extremely hostile to labor.

O’Brien, who has been courting Donald Trump’s favor for months now, called the former president a “tough SOB.” Still, RNC attendees grew quiet after O’Brien stopped talking about Trump and held the line on the union’s general opinion of the GOP’s power base, calling out the big businesses and corporate interests “waging a war against American workers.” In the hours after, there wasn’t too much outward criticism from within the Teamsters’ ranks, aside from some lone members criticizing O’Brien for making his play at the RNC.

The next morning, Senator Josh Hawley wrote up a fairly pro-worker response praising O’Brien’s speech. His point: “Unions are a vital piece of the fabric of a nation that depends on working people,” and the Republicans should “turn the corner on labor and get the party back to its roots.”

Notably, Hawley did not mention that zero Republican senators are supporting the PRO Act, the sweeping labor-rights bill to boost Americans’ rights to unionize. He also took a tangent into some of his most trodden anti-woke territory. Unfortunately, O’Brien posted a link to the Hawley blog post and said Hawley “is 100% on point.”

If you're a Teamster of color, are LGBTQ+, Sean O'Brien has just said he doesn't give a fuck about you. https://t.co/Ton5xr2I1G pic.twitter.com/LYvHIuhehY

— Daily Union Elections (@UnionElections) July 16, 2024

That message of support for an anti-LGBT politician apparently hit one social-media manager for the Teamsters the wrong way.

The rogue Teamsters social media manager is a real one, holy shit pic.twitter.com/kIWyXK5UlZ

— Kim Kelly (@GrimKim) July 17, 2024

“The message this sends to Teamsters of color, Teamster women, and LGBTQ Teamsters is that they are not welcome in the union unless they surrender their identity to a new kind of anti-woke unionism,” read the post on the Teamsters official account, which, screenshots say, went up after 2 a.m. “You don’t unite a diverse working class by scoffing at its diversity.”

Other labor reporters said they had seen the post too, which has since been deleted. O’Brien should know as well as anyone that a motivated Teamster won’t back down from a fight, and that probably goes double for people with the log-in to the social accounts.