What to Make of Teamster Neutrality?

Citing polling of the union’s membership that showed a majority of respondents expressed a desire for the union to support former President Donald Trump over incumbent Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters announced it would make no endorsement in the presidential race for the first time since 1996.

Has the previously busted myth of the nonpolitical labor union been un-busted and Big Labor broken away from the dark tower of Everything Leftism? Were the labor conservatives right all along?

A Political Double Standard

I have argued that the idea labor unions in the United States would ever be nonpolitical is a myth. Has the Teamsters union’s abstention from the 2024 presidential election disproved this assertion?

Hardly. Even the union’s statement announcing the non-endorsement betrayed the politics of Big Labor. The Teamsters wrote: “The union’s extensive member polling showed no majority support for Vice President Harris and no universal support among the membership for President Trump.” The “majority support” threshold to endorse the Democratic candidate and countervailing “universal support” threshold to potentially endorse the Republican is an interesting double standard.

Where Have We Heard That Number Before

Another double standard is revealed by exactly what that polling showed. The Teamsters commissioned Lake Research Partners to survey their membership on whom the union should endorse. Lake Research Partners is a Democratic-aligned polling firm that also does substantial work for labor unions that sit comfortably on organized labor’s left wing, including the National Education Association and the Communication Workers of America.

A comfortable (by the standards of America’s polarized national political environment) majority of respondents, 58 percent to 31 percent (with the remainder undecided), said that the union should endorse former President Trump. Now, one could plausibly argue that contributing its members’ treasure exclusively toward a political cause that only about six in ten members support would be imprudent and unfair.

I know it’s plausible, because I’ve argued likewise before. National election exit polls typically show about 60 percent of members of union households (the exit pollster term for union members and their families) vote Democratic at the national level while 40 percent vote Republican. In the 2022 House of Representatives elections, it was 57-42.

Did that stop Big Labor from endorsing Democrats and spending tens of millions of dollars to support the left-wing political advocacy infrastructure? Of course it didn’t. OpenSecrets broke down organized labor–related contributions to partisan recipients in the 2022 election cycle as $61.8 million to Democrats and $8.2 million to Republicans, an 88 percent to 12 percent split in favor of Democratic candidates.

A Signal of Convenience

Combine the Teamsters’ sudden and one-sided concern for the minority position of its membership with the moves by numerous Teamsters divisions to loudly announce their intention to back Vice President Harris, and the myth of the nonpolitical labor union is not refuted but confirmed. Indeed, the national Teamsters Union’s move to release the polling suggests that union bosses might be sending a message to their Everything Leftist progressive allies, with the message being “we really wanted to endorse Vice President Harris and show loyalty to the cause, but our membership wouldn’t let us.” If the Teamsters’ non-electoral advocacy spending and ESG activism continue as they have to date, that message becomes even more probable.

In that sense, the modern Teamsters are the opposite of the Jimmy Hoffa–era Teamsters for which some labor conservatives have misplaced nostalgia. Hoffa and his predecessor Dave Beck were often Republican-friendly, but not for any ideological or policy reason. They wanted, and often received, personal favors from Republican officeholders in the form of executive clemency for their many crimes. Today’s Teamster leadership are better than their infamous predecessors at staying on the right side of the law, but, because of the formerly-bent-unions-become-red-unions principle, many in the leadership are firmly committed to the Everything Leftist cause, even if their members are not.

So the Teamsters’ national non-endorsement (which was followed by a flurry of local and regional leadership-directed endorsements) is quite revealing. Even if a substantial majority of members want to oppose Everything Leftism, the institution many of them are effectively forced to join will not. It might even tell its members to drop their false consciousness and get in the environmentalist, social-liberal, socialist Everything Leftist ranks anyway. Their money, often extracted by compulsory dues laws, absolutely will be in those ranks.

Even when the membership want it, the nonpolitical labor union, to say nothing of “labor’s conservative heart,” remains elusive.