Image courtesy be-fearless.org.

With a few weeks to go before the start of the Teamsters’ union convention in Las Vegas, a major push is on to deny Richard Hooker the five per cent of delegates needed for him and his Fearless slate to be nominated. While there is still much skullduggery afoot to trash the reputation of Richard Hooker, the first African-American candidate for General President of the Teamsters, most of it is now quite open and increasingly nasty, as he challenges Sean O’Brien, the pro-Trump leader of the union.

A recent screed by Frank Halstead, a longstanding member and co-chair of the Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) in Southern California, was appears to be part of this campaign, while defending, however reluctantly, Hookers right to run. Frank lashes the Fearless slate for its shortcomings, which in some cases are true, including its failure to get enough signatures for candidate accreditation and not enough rank-and-file Teamsters on its slate. “The Fearless Slate just runs our union down. The Fearless slate can’t even run a real campaign. Why would members trust them to run our union?” he bellows.

Frank’s angry, mocking attacks on Hooker and Fearless remind me of the long-ago attacks on TDU by the Teamsters mobbed-up, old guard, who ridiculed it as “Tearing Down Unions” or “Too Dumb to Understand.” He ends his rant by virtually calling on Fearless to drop out of the race:

“Our Election Rules give opposition candidates every opportunity to prove themselves as organizers and leaders on the ground. But it’s up to the campaigns to do the work. The Fearless Slate has not done that. They’ve failed every test of leadership. They have the right to run. But they don’t deserve our support.”

I can hear the echoes of Hoffa Jr.’s cronies, who repeatedly called on Tom Leedham to drop out of several races during the early 2000s, where he challenged Hoffa for leadership of the Teamsters. I can remember them shouting “You can’t win”, “It’s a waste of time,” “Save us $20 million,” “We know who’s going to win!” Frank finds himself in bad company.

But, I also wondered reading Frank’s screed: Why all the vitriol? If Fearless is so marginal and incompetent, why even bother with them? Because all is not well in Teamsterland. There is widespread discontent in the membership, especially at UPS—which was told they won an “historic contract” back in 2023—but have suffered tens of thousands of layoffs and building closures across the country, and more is to come this year.

The buyout fiasco at UPS has also stirred up animosity among UPS Teamsters like nothing I’ve seen in recent memory. O’Brien’s bumbling handling of it has infuriated many UPS drivers. Whether this anger turns into a referendum on O’Brien or into not voting at all remains to be seen. Nowhere in Frank’s attack on Hooker does he make any effort to defend O’Brien’s record in office. It’s all about trashing Fearless.

The upcoming election, if Hooker makes his 5%, will also be about O’Brien’s alliance with Trump, whose public approval is collapsing. Hank Kennedy asked in a widely circulated profile of O’Brien:

What has been gained by O’Brien’s podcast pugilism and right-wing flattery? Not the PRO Act, which remains mired in Congress and is still opposed by Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance. Not a repeal of right-to-work laws, which Abbott continues to support after his long career railing against “Big Labor.” Not federal help organizing Amazon, which refuses to sign a union contract with Amazon Teamsters in New York. Instead, Trump has appointed a former UPS and Amazon safety compliance officer to head OSHA, despite both companies’ poor safety records. Union-busting lawyer Crystal Carey was nominated to serve as chief counsel for the National Labor Relations Board. Federal employees have seen their unions decertified under flimsy justifications of “national security.” ICE has even showed up to Teamster picket lines to intimidate strikers. Even the seemingly historic UPS contract is coming apart amidst dozens of hub closings and tens of thousands of layoffs. Labor’s birthright has been sold for a mess of very bad pottage.

There has been a definite change in the mood of Teamster members across. Hooker in a recent and wide-ranging interview with Brian Tierney on Substack told him:

“We’ve been to a lot of places during the campaign and, to be honest with you, I have tried not to talk too much about the Trump issue because we need to focus first on what the employers are doing. I try to emphasize this is a class war. And as much as I try, members want to talk about the political situation and O’Brien working with Trump, because they are not happy about it. The majority of the people that we’ve spoken to are not happy with his decision to embrace the pedophile Epstein ruling class and its poster boy, Donald Trump.

Some of the people we spoke with said they voted for Trump, but they are regretting that vote because prices have not come down, it’s costing more to live and get by with gas prices and everything. That issue of affordability puts stress on families — it doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat, Republican, independent, or whatever. It’s harder and it’s more expensive to live right now. A lot of our members want to talk about that, and we tell them that we need to start focusing on having our own political party, independent of Democrats, independent of the Republicans. Because both parties are two wings on the same bird, which is the corporate class.”

All Teamsters and the broader working class have gotten massive cutbacks, bigotry, and a promise of a new round of endless wars.

The trade union left in shambles

Let’s face it, the left is in shambles in the Teamsters. TDU, whose roots are in the rank and file rebellion of the 1970s, has been through many decades of political deterioration accelerated by their “coalition” with the deeply reactionary leadership of the union. It inspires few outside the Teamsters’ patronage ranks these days. It acts as O’Brien’s hatchet man cracking the whip on critics on his critics and dissidents in leadership, such as International Vice-President John Palmer and Teamsters Mobilize.

What happened to a few socialist principles guiding our work in the trade unions? How did TDU get on the wrong side of a fight between the fascist-aligned Sean O’Brien and Richard Hooker, an insurgent African-American leader? Frank Halstead, whose family has deep roots in the American Trotskyist movement, is a prominent example of this, but there are plenty of other “socialists” who joined TDU’s ranks over the decades, who’ve traded principles for petty staff positions and privileges. It seems at this point that TDU is irredeemable and a new formation of leftwing activists and militants is necessary.

Yet, the problems of the Left in the Teamsters are similar to the problems in other unions, including the UAW and the Chicago Teachers’ Union (CTU). Reform has ground to a halt, and many rank-and-file caucuses that inspired many people a few years ago have turned into sclerotic incumbents or caucuses split and divided over important political questions. Hopefully, Richard Hooker and the Fearless slate can make it onto the ballot and a competitive election takes place in the Teamsters, but the broader reform movements in all unions need a new direction to face the challenges ahead.