Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
For the first time since Bill Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign, the 1.3-million member Teamsters union declined to endorse a Democrat running for president. Buit while Teamsters chieftain Sean O’Brien, known to hobnob with Trump at Mar-A-Lago, is busy not endorsing anyone, unions have plenty to do that’s more mundane and more important: namely strikes and job actions.
For those rankled by O’Brien’s non-endorsement, well, they should be: Trump recently praised the notion of firing striking workers, though that’s illegal under federal law. Meanwhile, according to Steven Greenhouse in Slate September 20, “Harris is part of the administration that moved political heaven and earth…[for] an $86 billion bill, passed in 2021, that rescues the underfunded pensions of over 400,000 Teamsters members and 2 million union members in all. (Trump opposed that legislation.)”
But when you get down in the weeds, things are not so clear cut. True enough, Trump wants more of those ghastly corporate tax cuts for aristocrats who don’t need them, but he also wants to end Reagan’s tax on social security income. As Jack Rasmus noted in CounterPunch September 25: “I hear Trump talking no tax on tips…no tax on overtime pay…Harris wants to reinstitute $3k for child care that Biden ended…Before Harris mentioned her $3k, J.D. Vance had already proposed $5k.” So the rigid “Dems for working people versus Trump against them” doesn’t quite hold – and hasn’t since the Bill “Send the Jobs to Mexico” Clinton presidency. But make no mistake: overall the GOP is the party of the Chamber of Commerce – always was, always will be, and no faux populism can change that – it’s just that ever since the Clintons traipsed along, well, so is the Democratic party.
Besides lining up, or not, behind candidates, what has occupied labor lately? East Coast longshoremen struck October 1 for the first time in 47 years, when for seven weeks Atlantic ports were clogged. Earlier, New York Amazon delivery drivers joined the Teamsters, regardless of O’Brien’s political oddities. And autoworkers are poised to strike Stellantis for “failing to honor its agreements…including the celebrated reopening of the Belvedere assembly plant in Illinois,” labornotes reported September 17. That day, the UAW “filed unfair labor practice charges against Stellantis with the National Labor Relations Board,” with UAW president Shawn Fain pointing to the recent contract and charging that “Now Stellantis wants to go back on the deal.”
It’s tough enough for workers to get contracts with their bosses. Once they do, they have to fight tooth and nail to enforce them. Which is just one more reminder of the law of the capitalist jungle: workers are prey, and unless they stick together vigilantly, the predator will devour them. And I mean vigilantly, because it sure looks like Stellantis intends to eat the union for lunch, contract be damned. Not only has this company reneged on contract deals, it plans “to move production of the Dodge Durango out of Michigan, to Canada, in violation of the national agreement.”
Now the UAW “won the right to strike over product commitments…The grievance filing sets the stage to strike Stellantis nationwide, if necessary. Fain asked the public for support for a potential strike when he addressed the Democratic Convention in August.” Unlike the Teamsters’ O’Brien, who addressed the Republican National Convention – one that nominated Trump who promises labor’s and autoworkers’ arch enemy, Elon “Morally Outraged at Unions” Musk a position high up in his white house.
This is no surprise. Unti Bill “End Welfare” Clinton came along, you could count on Dems to be good on domestic policy and appalling on foreign policy. Until George “WMD” Bush came along, you could count on the GOP to be decent on foreign policy and appalling domestically. Now both are appalling on both. So it’s worth noting how Trump changes the equation, specifically the GOP’s neo-con tone: He called on Benjamin Netanyahu to end the carnage in Gaza; he vows to end the bloodshed in Ukraine, well before we are all incinerated in an atomic apocalypse; he promises A DEAL with Iran to head off the no longer merely looming regional catastrophic combat and recently went out of his way to announce he does NOT want war with China. Now this may all be pie in the sky, but the mere fact that a candidate for the American presidency utters such words is encouraging, and it is far superior to the Dems’ nauseating foreign policy. Because Biden, who actually has the power to ameliorate all of these disasters, refuses to put his foot down and end the killing in Gaza, continues to send weapons to Ukraine for the slaughter he provoked, has NO plan or pact for Iran, zero, zilch, nada, zip, and does nothing but make such bellicose noises about China that Beijing is on target to assemble 1500 nuclear warheads by 2030. Who here, on foreign policy, is the lesser evil?
Back on the home front, labor has no reason to trust Trump – or Biden for that matter, who, after all, ignominiously broke the railroad workers’ strike. Indeed, if Trump does win, he’ll have plenty of strike-breaking precedent, even if a Stellantis strike doesn’t cause a “national emergency.” My bet is the fact that striking autoworkers aren’t government employees or federally associated or causing a national emergency would be meaningless to whatever Big Money bigwig Trump chooses as labor secretary. It sure would mean bupkis to Musk. And if the dockworkers walk out for any extended period of time, which can easily be portrayed as causing a national emergency, in fact the Chamber of Commerce is already doing just that, expect Trump or even Harris to try to break that strike, big time. Biden says he won’t break the longshoremen’s strike, but that’s now. What if that strike drags on? So the unions better buckle up. It’s gonna be a bloody fight for workers’ rights against an executive branch that either doesn’t believe in them or one that says it does until in practice, well, not so much.
Perhaps that’s what Teamster honcho O’Brien was thinking. Or maybe he was dazzled by Mar-A-Lago glitz; if so, he’s one of the biggest chumps in labor history. Or maybe he responded to one of Trump’s periodic pronouncements on behalf of ordinary people, like his recent suggestion of a 10 percent cap on credit card interest. If Trump continues to tout that, how will Harris reply? Curbing the rate at which Americans sink into debt would be most welcome, but given her neo-liberal chase after Wall Street, don’t hold your breath. It’s far more likely that she’ll fire the courageous FTC head, Lina Khan, who has had the delightfully breathtaking nerve to do her job, therefore anathematized by big business, as she exposes price fixing for insulin, thus offending thin-skinned billionaires, such as the founder and owner of Linkedin, Reid Hoffman, who, after a $7 million donation to Harris’ campaign, recently and quite obnoxiously demanded Harris fire her.
So overall, domestically and in foreign affairs, neither candidate is wonderful, but Trump seems less likely to reduce the continental United States to an ashy, burnt out, radioactive trash can in a war with Russia/China/Iran than Harris. But on labor, Harris is an unknown. Unknown is better. Unknown leaves room for hope. Also, it’s unlikely a Harris appointment to secretary of labor would be rabidly anti-union. Such a Trump appointment most assuredly would be. Harris may not talk as good a game as her current boss, but look how he turned out: busting the rail strike and reneging on campaign promises like boosting the minimum wage and a public option for medical care that would have helped working people. On domestic issues – NOT foreign ones – that affect those of us without fifth homes on the Cote d’Azur or multimillion-dollar yachts, the Dems used to be preferable. But to repeat: on foreign affairs the Dems are flat out horrible, as they drag the country toward nuclear war with Russia and China and who knows what in the Middle East.
Meanwhile, you can bet the Amazon delivery drivers, who announced September 16 that they’re joining the Teamsters, don’t care too much about O’Brien’s non-endorsement. These “drivers are part of Amazon’s 4,400 delivery service partners (DSPs) program – meaning they are nominally employed by contractors even while Amazon retains full control,” wrote labornotes September 16. “Through DSPs, Amazon says it employs 390,000 drivers. That’s roughly the same size workforce as Teamsters at UPS.” Imagine if they all successfully organized in the Teamsters as Amazon employees, which they are in fact though not in name. The fight required to attain that status would likely require a sympathetic white house, though I doubt either of the two candidates would support that; still, with Harris, you just don’t know. She might.
It’s a disaster for ordinary people everywhere that the Dems, once upon a time more humane on labor, are so atrocious on foreign policy. Again, until the second Bush meandered down the path to the white house, you could say that overall, the GOP was better at avoiding foreign wars. But it was and remains lousy at avoiding labor wars, and it actively assists the rich in their class war against the rest of us. If we could have a Harris presidency without the Biden foreign policy, that would be preferable. Currently it looks like an optimist’s delusion.
