Teamsters Decline to Endorse Trump or Harris for President

(Bloomberg) -- The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is declining to endorse a candidate for president, a blow to both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump as they seek to court union workers.

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“Unfortunately, neither major candidate was able to make serious commitments to our union to ensure the interests of working people are always put before Big Business,” Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien said in a statement Wednesday.

“We 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,” he added.

The move follows Harris’ closed-door meeting with union leaders Monday in Washington. Most of the country’s labor establishment lined up behind President Joe Biden, and then pivoted to support Harris after he dropped his reelection bid in July. Labor officials including Liz Shuler, the president of the AFL-CIO, have hailed Biden as “the most pro-union president in our lifetimes.”

But the Teamsters have proved a more elusive target. O’Brien sought to curry favor with both sides as he presides over a membership that includes large swaths who support Trump.

“While the Executive Board of the Teamsters is making no formal endorsement, the vast majority of rank-and-file working men and women in this important organization want President Donald Trump back in the White House,” the Trump campaign said in a statement following the announcement.

The White House declined to address the lack of endorsement directly, while pointing to the work that the Biden-Harris administration has done more broadly for unions.

“The president has certainly not just done the talk, he’s walked the walk,” Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Wednesday. “And I think there are many labor unions out there who have seen that from this administration.”

Earlier on Wednesday, the Teamsters released internal polling data that showed members had initially favored endorsing Biden over Trump, 44% to 36%. In further rounds of polling after Harris became the Democratic nominee, the majority of respondents backed Trump. In polling conducted a few days ago, 58% supported endorsing Trump, compared to 31% for Harris, the union said.

O’Brien spoke at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July — the first time a leader of the union has done so. With the former president looking on, O’Brien praised Trump as “one tough SOB” – an allusion to Trump’s response to an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania days earlier — and echoed the populist rhetoric that was the dominant theme of the convention while praising Republican lawmakers like Senators Josh Hawley and JD Vance, the party’s vice presidential nominee.

But some parts of O’Brien’s speech, including attacks on corporate profiteering and praise for job protections, were received coolly in the hall — a sign of how much Trump’s appeals to populism are requiring Republicans to adjust longstanding pro-business inclinations.

The Trump campaign has hoped it can continue to bank strong support among working people – including members of unions – even though organized labor leaders have overwhelmingly supported Democrats in general and Biden in particular.

Union workers are poised to be a critical voting bloc in some key swing states. A Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll last month found that 53% of swing-state voters in union households support Harris and 44% would support Trump.

Even if a substantial portion of Teamsters members support Trump based on other hot-button issues, such as immigration, others in the labor movement say Harris has a stronger case as a union ally thanks to the actions of the Biden administration.

Those include directing a $36 billion bailout to rescue union pension plans from insolvency. In all, the administration says its efforts protected pensions for some 600,000 Teamsters workers and retirees, and more than 1 million union workers and retirees nationwide.

--With assistance from Gregory Korte, Michelle Jamrisko and Akayla Gardner.

(Updates with White House comment in seventh paragraph.)

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