Republican Pro-Labor Cosplay

It was like a hedge fund manager donning a ragpicker costume for Halloween. Don't take it seriously.

Nice Edward G. Robinson confronts gangster Edward G. Robinson in John Ford’s “The Whole Town’s Talking” (1935). You won’t get the relevance unless you click through to my New Republic piece (and possibly not even then).

On the day before Teamsters President Sean O’Brien addressed the Republican National Convention—he was the first Teamsters president to do so, even though the Teamsters endorsed nearly every Republican presidential nominee from Richard Nixon through George H.W. Bush—Teamsters Vice President at Large John Palmer published an op-ed in the Las Vegas Sun headlined “GOP Convention Is No Place For Union Leaders.” Palmer posed a series of questions for O’Brien.

Would O’Brien “remind the anti-union delegates that labor unions exist to ensure that workers — regardless of their race, sex, gender, gender identity or religion — equally enjoy the security and fairness that a written labor agreement provides?” Yes, O’Brien did that in his Monday night speech.

Would O’Brien “state the obvious fact that unions’ ability to achieve these goals is being stripped away by the current overzealous Supreme Court?” No, O’Brien didn’t do that.

“Is O’Brien going to confront Donald Trump and his Republican Party for continuing to support right-to-work legislation across the country?” O’Brien did not.

“What pro-worker accomplishments can O’Brien point to during Trump’s term?” Certainly not Trump’s tariffs; those delivered retribution but no changes in China’s behavior. If you’ll permit me a moment of pedantry, there was one and only one—Trump’s largely-forgotten revision, in 2019, of the North American Free Trade Agreement. We can argue about how significant that revision turned out to be for the American worker, but it was the first free trade agreement that the AFL-CIO endorsed in nearly 20 years; the previous instance was the (relatively minor) U.S.-Jordan Free Trade Agreement in 2001.

But no, O’Brien didn’t mention any pro-worker accomplishments under Trump.

Writing July 11 in The American Prospect, Harold Meyerson suggested that O’Brien

might ask [Republicans] to endorse the recent ruling from Biden’s OSHA that requires employers to provide heat breaks to workers in weather like that which the nation is currently experiencing. He might ask that Republicans on the NLRB not continue to work to destroy unions, or that Republicans, should Trump win

Didn’t happen.

In my latest New Republic piece, I describe and interpret what O’Brien did say, while also reviewing the Teamster’s historic affinity, unique among national labor unions, with the Grand Old Party. The Mob brought them together. You can read my piece here.