A realignment is gripping America’s trade union movement. For the first time since 1996, its fourth largest union, the Teamsters, will not endorse the Democratic candidate for president. It’s an embarrassment for Kamala Harris who has made working people central to her campaign. Working class voters in traditionally industrial states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania could hold the key to the election. Losing their support could be fatal.
The Teamsters’ leadership took the decision, announced on 19 September, amid splits among its members over the election. Three Teamsters regional councils, representing hundreds of thousands of members, have now endorsed Harris. Former Teamsters president James P. Hoffa Jr. called the decision not to endorse Harris a “critical error” which “undermined” the Democratic campaign.
Teamsters current president Sean O’Brien stood on a platform to listen to rank-and-file members and the union has cited polling of members to justify their decision. In one poll before Joe Biden dropped out of the race, Teamsters members supported him by 44 per cent to Donald Trump’s 36 per cent. Biden, after all, has reduced restrictions on strikes and beefed up the National Labor Relations Board, which protects employee rights. He was the first sitting president to walk a picket line. But Harris has not managed to hold on to that support. When polled earlier this month, Teamsters backed Trump by 58 per cent to Harris’s 31 per cent.
Yet the rupture between the Democratic party and the union have been brewing since before Harris became the candidate. O’Brien was handed a prime-time speaking slot at the Republican Convention in July. He railed against the “economic terrorism” committed against working people to a reception that was initially warm but turned tepid. His appearance at the GOP convention triggered a lot of condemnation. When he asked to speak at the Democratic convention, he was turned down and rank-and-file members were reportedly invited to speak instead.
The day the decision not to endorse a candidate was announced, O’Brien told Fox News that the Democrats “have always taken for granted” the Teamsters’ support, while the “Republicans are fancying themselves as the working people’s party”. The picture is more complicated than that – both parties contain pro-worker and pro-business camps. Trump himself, for instance, has publicly laughed with Elon Musk about firing workers who go on strike. Yet Republican Senator Josh Hawley has gone viral for grilling Boeing’s chief executive for his $32.8 million salary, and has been endorsed by the SMART union, which represents transport workers among others. At the same time, JD Vance told the firefighters union in August that “the Republican Party is the party of the American worker”.
On the Democratic side, Biden accurately boasts that his administration has implemented policy after policy to support unions. On his third day in office, for instance, he revoked a Trump directive which made it easier to fire federal employees at will. He even bailed out the Teamsters’ pension fund. But Harris is not getting credit for Biden’s policies, partly because she was seen as an ineffective politician who didn’t deliver on the briefs she was given. Harris is also known for her technocratic language. While Biden describes himself as a “pro-worker” president, Harris talks more about what she calls an “opportunity economy”. Another new slogan is the “care economy”. On the campaign she keeps touting, oblivious to the implication, that Goldman Sachs backs her economic plans. These are not ploys designed with trade unionists in mind.
Rising immigration makes this even more dangerous for the Democrats. In his pitch to the firefighters’ union, Vance said the government should spend less on housing immigrants and more on working class workers. If immigration and the cost of living, the two most important issues for Americans in this election, are linked together in voters’ minds, as Trump is desperately trying to do, then the Democrats could suffer. Harris is now promising to secure the border, sure. But she has nothing to say about fears that immigration is dragging down wages. A YouGov poll from May for the Progressive Policy Institute asked working class voters what was making them poorer. The biggest proportion (35 per cent) pointed to immigration across the southern border, far outweighing concerns over free trade and the loss of manufacturing. To some already struggling with money, immigration exacerbates the sense that they are being treated unfairly.
The Teamsters is just one union. Many others are backing Harris. But it isn’t just the Teamsters who don’t like the Democrats. The same YouGov poll found that working class voters in general, many in key swing states, support Donald Trump by 47 per cent to 41 per cent. And this poll took place when Biden was still the candidate.
O’Brien is right to suggest there is a tussle between the two parties to claim the mantle of the working class. He might even be revelling in the fight. The Republicans certainly sense an opportunity. Despite his actions in office, Biden’s victory in 2020 was largely down to a surge in support from affluent, white suburban voters, while Trump made gains with the white, black and Hispanic working class. The choice of JD Vance, a working-class Ohioan, as the vice-presidential candidate shows the Republicans’ determination to entrench this trend (though it’s so far unclear how much Vance, whose favourability rating is hovering around 34 per cent, has boosted Trump’s election prospects).
Kamala Harris might claim that working people are at the centre of her campaign, but many don’t believe her.
[See also: Donald Trump is losing it]
