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.
What can I say that Cesario Chavez, the Mexican that was the head of most efforts to unionize, not Americans, but legal immigrants to prevent the dilution of existing farm workers with cheap illegal labor, has not already said? Eventually, under the name of compassionate campaign rhetoric, via Democratic politicians, the aim is to provide paths to citizenship and voting. It is designed first to garner votes, as rapidly as possible. This gives Democrats needed votes (under pseudo pretenses) and big corporations cheap labor. And it is not only Democrats who champion immigration. Wall Street has alway championed open borders based on one reason… labor costs.
It was Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, once again, fighting as champion of the underdog, which got him the votes of legal immigrant Italians but was that his real purpose? He also brought Puerto Rican labor into the garment district of NYC to help the garment Companies increase their profits by decreasing their labor costs. He ran as a pro labor, anti-crime Republican yet, purposefully or inadvertently, helped establish a population of Puerto Rican cheap laborers that consistently vote blue since they arrive from Puerto Rico already registered as Democrats.
Union bosses often think differently than their members and Donald Trump, as a builder and businessman sees the proletariat worker in a different way than Karl Marx, the theoretician, ever could. He worked with labor shoulder to shoulder and has far more in common with them than union leaders could ever have because of his solidarity with American work ethics, their livelihoods and his necessary success as the shareholder and company head of the corporate businesses he created. I have always said that Russia would not have had their 1917 Revolution had unions beat Marx and his Bolshevik allies to the punch. Labor and business have to develop a partnership where both are happy which is not easy with government acting as an empire.
It is both the Democrats and Republicans that support exporting manufacturing labor costs, via NAFTA, to other countries. They made the cost of domestic labor so expensive that products built elsewhere, where labor costs considerably less, as the only solution to remain profitable. Follow the money and discover that you will end up on a long and winding road that traverses through both parties.
As a veterinarian I don’t produce products. I provided services and with approximately fifty employees, doing business in NYC, the cost of labor, although large, represented the smaller problem. Even mandated benefits under the umbrella of required insurance policies were never my biggest concern. We could handle that and still remain productive, profitable and remain outstandingly important to the community. Years ago a competitor asked why so many people liked working for me. I never considered a question like that but I had the answer. We provided a family like environment and covered each others backs. Employees had a choice of medical insurance policies and investment opportunities in 401K profit plans. They were given loans and generous holiday bonuses and we often helped pay the tuition costs of their children and arranged schedules to accommodate child care. Ultimately, before selling to a large equity company, my biggest concern became the new militant millennial employees influenced by the arriving “woke ethic” philosophy. No longer did workers understand that if they took care of the business the business would take care of them. We hired people (3) just to stand by, to be ready, to fill jobs of workers who, frequently called in sick and, based on NYS and NYC laws, could not be easily terminated. Furthermore the Covid Pandemic made it easy for them to stay home and still get paid via government funds now responsible for significant aspects of the current inflation. Ultimately, just as in the medical profession, veterinarians found it both profitable and less stressful to get out by selling to large companies looking for easier ways to garner profits. They now monopolize the market with the result that Veterinary services have now skyrocketed way beyond all inflation indexes. Furthermore, you can’t export your pet to another country for services.
Solutions are in the works. Employees participating in part of the profits, via sweat equity, is in its infancy. In my opinion Donald Trump understands labor very well. The time has come for other businesses, without unions, to do the same but, most of all, the time has existentially arrived for “woke” employees to understand management. That is something Democrats, such as AOC, have not even a clue. Boston University, however, owes all Americans an explanation of why they gave her a degree in Economics.