Julia Conley
Sep 18, 2024
Cowards.
On the contrary: after being taken for granted for a generation, the Teamsters finally grew a spine.
O’Brien said Wednesday that the union “sought commitments from both Trump and Harris not to interfere in critical union campaigns or core Teamsters industries—and to honor our members’ right to strike—but were unable to secure those pledges.”
When a party can rely on your vote no matter what, you’ve abdicated your political leverage, and it will walk all over you.
Respectfully, this is bullshit.
O’Brien growing a spine would have involved calling out Republicans and their policies at the RNC.
The Republican Party, as it exists under the leadership of Donald J. Trump, is a party of and based around an ideology of bigotry, marginalization, oppression, and hatred.
O’Brien’s speech and this announcement serve as a tacit endorsement of that ideology. The leadership or the International Brotherhood of Teamsters is telling the world and the rank-and-file that the repressive, Neo-fascist ideology of Trumpism is at the very least acceptable to them.
There is zero chance that the right to organize survives a second Trump administration.
All O’Brien did here was throwing out female, PoC, immigrant, refugee, migrant, and LGBTQ+ brothers, sisters, and family under the bus.
It was the opposite of Solidarity.
