By Martha Grevatt
September 27, 2024

With the November election less than 45 days away, most organizations, including unions, have made their endorsements. Nine of the 10 largest unions in the U.S. have endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president. The lone exception is the Teamsters union (IBT) which, in a statement released Sept. 18, indicated it was not endorsing either Harris or former President Donald Trump.

Unfortunately, this break with tradition — which under other circumstances might have been welcome as a progressive challenge to the Democratic Party’s stranglehold on the labor movement — actually represents a capitulation to the reactionary Trump forces.

According to the Teamsters’ own statement, the non-endorsement was approved by the union’s General Executive Board after “in independent electronic and phone polling from July-September, a majority of voting members twice selected Trump for a possible Teamsters endorsement over Harris.” (teamster.org)

This poll should have been a wake-up call to the Teamsters leadership! Such a high level of support for this fascist candidate indicates that a mass anti-racist educational campaign is urgently needed. The union statement should have announced that it was going all-out to win its rank and file away from the white-supremacist and xenophobic ideology that Trump epitomizes. Such a campaign would build working-class solidarity against the capitalist class, including its ultraright wing.

The union statement rightly criticized both Trump and Harris for not committing to support railroad workers’ right to strike and Biden’s record of blocking a railroad strike in 2022. But a Teamsters-wide anti-racist mobilization would strengthen class unity around defending the rights of railroad workers, who include IBT members.

Instead, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien is continuing down the slippery slope, beginning with his horrendous speech at the Republican National Convention in July, of treating racism and bigotry as non-issues.

What should unions do?

The revolt inside the Teamsters against O’Brien’s appeasement of the Trump forces has already begun, but it has been limited to the narrow confines of endorsing Harris. That is the clearly stated position of the newly formed Teamsters Against Trump.

Many Teamster locals have come out for Harris, seeing no other way to oppose Trump — who is blatantly anti-union and recently joked with billionaire Elon Musk about firing striking workers, which is illegal — beyond falling in line behind the Democratic Party.

A progressive non-endorsement would bear no resemblance to the Teamsters’ recent statement. For starters, it would call out both candidates for supporting the genocide in Palestine. It would oppose the China-bashing and warmongering oozing out of the mouths of both Harris and Trump.

But in fact the Teamsters union has not even taken a position on Palestine. This is in contrast to most of the largest U.S. unions, who at least have called for a ceasefire and an arms embargo on Israel, in spite of endorsing Harris.

A progressive non-endorsement would call on the workers and oppressed to build a militant, independent, class-wide movement against the capitalist class and all its wars. This movement might include a new third party — a working class party to oppose both parties of big business.

But for right now the job of launching such a movement will fall on rank-and-file workers.