Interview: Teamster President Sean O'Brien's "Militant" Strategy Explained.

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

GED/HEO

3-30-22

Here is a December 2021 interview with Sean O’ Brien, the new president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) after defeating Jimmy Hoffa and his slate in the national election in October. The Hoffa regime ran the union for 23 years. Hoffa is the son of Jimmy Hoffa who was killed and his body never found. He is a lawyer by trade.

 

While it is positive that there has been a change in leadership at one of the largest and most important unions in the US. It is important not to get carried away here. In fact, it is worth reflecting on the fact that the vast majority of Teamster members never bothered to vote, the turnout was a mere 14%.  After decades of sell outs, concessionary contracts, and top officials lining their own pockets, the rank and file of the Teamsters, and of organized labor in general are clearly not convinced that much if anything will change.

 

Teamsters For a Democratic Union, the reform group in the union is very supportive and also in coalition with the Obrien team known as the OZ slate or Teamsters United.  A major battle for Teamsters United will be the United Parcel Contract (UPS) coming up in 2023 and also organizing Amazon workers.

 

It is not insignificant that this election victory has taken place in the midst of the pandemic which has revealed who are important or “essential” workers in society and this has given workers increased confidence. This praising of the worker in the mass media will make it difficult to put that genie back in the bottle.

 

There has been an uptick in strike activity within organized labor and among the unorganized seeking to unionize so it’s not inconceivable that an aggressive strategy in disputes could win some temporary reforms from the bosses; workers are angry. The same is true of the unorganized as there have been increased walk-outs and protests as some of the most exploited workers try to join or form unions.

 

But a major obstacle in the way of a rank and file revolt within organized labor has been the labor officialdom itself, and Sean O’ Brien is part of that historical blockage. I don’t have to go in to detail again here, but it is my view that what lies behind the betrayals and outright class collaboration of labor’s leadership at the highest levels is not simply corruption or their obscene salaries, but their view of the world; the former are secondary features and consequences not causes. They believe the market is the answer to all things and that there is no alternative to capitalism, so when capitalism enters a profitability crisis, the union bureaucracy’s first move is to bail it out. This view is enshrined in the Team Concept, called labor/ management cooperation, Quality of Life Circles, Total Quality Management (TQM), Employee Empowerment, Employee Participation and more. It’s been a disaster for us and any union opposition has little credibility if it doesn’t openly campaign against it.

 

It is important not to dismiss why workers don’t vote in national elections for capitalist parties and their representatives, or why only 14% of those eligible voted in the Teamsters election. In both cases, voting is not an exercise in civics, it is in order to improve our material conditions. If that doesn’t work, people withdraw. Why pay union dues when dues go up and wages and benefits go down.

 

If you listen to Sean O’ Brien in the interview above one has to gasp at Sean Orr, the chair of DSA’s Democratic Socialist Labor Commission (DSLC) reference to the new Teamster leadership as, “the militant O'Brien-Zuckerman Teamsters United Slate” (my added emphasis) as there is little evidence that the term “militant” would apply here. This is the result of DSA’s inexperience in the labor movement and its very middle-class composition. As I wrote in a previous commentary, this political current, isolated in the main from the rank and file of organized labor as most of the self-styled socialist organizations are, and who don’t really orient to the rank and file union worker, see in the slightest leftward shift (primarily in rhetoric) in the entrenched bureaucracy as a revolutionary upsurge.

 

Sean O’ Brien says nothing about the Team Concept at all other than to confirm that he will continue to practice it in politics continuing his relationship with the Democratic Party. He will “energize politicians” “influence” them and local government (Democrats). He even flew in the same plane with Biden’s Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh, the Democratic mayor of Boston and former top union official. “Marty comes to this with a closeness to the president-elect and an ability to get things done,” says American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. Talk to some genuinely “militant” teachers about Randi Weingarten. Obrien refers to yet another Democratic Party administration and its president as pro-union despite knowing that under Democrat and Republican alike US workers and our unions have been driven backwards. Carter used the Taft Hartley against the mineworkers, Clinton threw people off welfare in to union jobs without the same pay and benefits. In California we are in a one party state the Democrats have such power, yet we have the same problems that plague the rest of the country.

 

Only 6% of the private sector is unionized which is one of the reasons why unions like the Teamsters and the UAW are orienting more to the public sector which has around a 35% unionization rate and is considered easier to organize. The union density is why the public sector is under such a savage assault. I should add this as well, it is the decline of the public sector that contributes immensely to the poverty and declining living standards of all workers and even more so, the lack of opportunity in communities of color. See Tauré Reeds book, Toward Freedom, The Case Against Race Reductionism for more on this.

 

The main point is this interview with O’Brien is that there is nothing new in it. He wants to change the law to make organizing easier he says.  In other words, get democrats elected. Obama betrayed the union hierarchy not passing EFCA, the Employee Free Choice Act. They were hanging their hat on his producing this as it meant less work for them as getting out there and organizing workers using the real power of workers on the ground could be avoided, and it would bring in more revenue for the business. They see the unions as employment agencies with themselves as the CEO’s.

 

O’brien prioritizes rebuilding the middle class (there’s no working class in the US apparently). Organizing the unorganized. Negotiating great contracts, educating workers; all the usual platitudes.

 

I want to clarify. I do not say there is no difference at all between Democrats and Republicans. But on the main points they both will defend the interests of capital and not labor. If O’Brien was anything of a militant he would be raising the issue of the dire need for an independent political party of the working class and threatening to campaign and build for it among his members and the wider movement. Organized labor has the structure, resources and money. There is no way forward for workers through the Democratic Party.

 

I think he mentions the word strike once in this interview.

 

I am not saying that some reforms might be wrested from Biden, or a Republican administration given the present climate and a little more aggression than usual from the labor bureaucracy. Let us not forget that in 2018, rank and file teachers/educators in West Virginia won a 5% raise against opposition from the legislature, struck in a right to work state against their own leadership’s recommendations and won a 5% increase for every state worker involved in the strike or not. This and the fairly successful actions in education that followed, mostly in Republican states, was not taken up and built on by the trade union hierarchy for reasons I have outlined here, and in the past, or by the Labor Notes organization and DSA that have some significant resources but are both reluctant to openly confront the existing leadership or in some cases occupy the lower ranks of it. In the case of DSA, my experience has been that DSA acts as cheerleaders.

 

As for the Teamsters, I hope this change in leadership will play a role in not only transforming this union but in transforming organized labor as a whole and the balance of forces between labor and capital in US society.