Unions should be about employees, not about politics 

“I’ll be honest with you,” said Teamsters President Sean O’Brien in a recent podcast interview. “I’m a Democrat, but they have f—ed us over for the last 40 years.”

Wearing a T-shirt with “Teamsters vs. Everybody,” he accused Democrats of selling out “working people” in favor of “Big Tech.”  

O’Brien’s rhetoric mirrors the feelings of Teamsters’ rank-and-file, which supports former President Trump over Vice President Harris by nearly 20 percentage points. The Teamsters and International Association of Fire Fighters, whose rightward leanings are admittedly less severe, declined to endorse either presidential candidate. 

Still, O’Brien may be the only union leader who will publicly say anything negative about the Democratic Party. Union executives invest heavily in Democratic campaigns, believing the left is their best bet to pass the PRO Act out of Congress, open up new government workplaces for unionization, and sign new contracts with local teacher unions.  

At every turn, these measures help union executives take over and control workplaces, but at the expense of individual employees who don’t want a union in their lives.

Notably, all other major labor unions — particularly those in the public sector — back Kamala Harris enthusiastically, even those with members closely divided on the election. In August, National Education Association President Becky Pringle told WHYY, Philadelphia’s NPR affiliate, that membership was “nearly evenly split between Democrats, Republicans, and independents.” Yet she drove her union — the country’s largest union, public or private — to endorse Harris. 

The Teamsters and IAFF demonstrate that the NEA and other unions can simply decline political endorsements that divide their members. After all, members don’t want a union focused on politics, but on core collective bargaining activities. Gallup polling reveals the top reasons employees join a labor union are “Better pay and benefits,” “Employee representation-Employee rights,” and “Job Security.” 

Meanwhile, employees who don’t like their unions’ political agenda have few meaningful options. Withdrawing one’s membership deprives the union of hundreds of dollars — and may be a necessary step in personal protest — but it clearly won’t change the mind of someone like Pringle. According to Americans for Fair Treatment, the NEA lost 14,205 members in its most recent reporting period and a total of 51,987 members since 2021. Yet she remains as political as ever. 

It’s also ridiculously difficult to vote top union executives out of office. These elections, governed by internal union rules, rarely allow members to vote directly for the highest offices, and most leaders never face contested or competitive elections.  

In addition, union elections are often rife with corruption; consider the recent “election” for the president of Philadelphia Federation of Teachers. Its longtime president, Jerry Jordan, announced his retirement this year, but only after the union’s filing deadline. Curiously, just one person, Arthur Steinberg — Jordan’s close friend and a staffer for the union— had the foresight to file as a candidate for PFT president before the deadline. 

Labor law is often unhelpful. Federal and most state labor laws allow workers to kick the union out entirely, perhaps to replace it with one more responsive to membership. But legal restrictions, including unnecessarily tight windows to file “decertification” petitions, make this maneuver almost impossible. It takes time, money and lawyers — and union executives opposing any ouster have much more of all three. 

What are employees fed up with union politics supposed to do? 

Let’s start by distinguishing entitled union executives from the rank-and-file. Most unions never ask members how they feel about political issues or candidates without seeding poll questions to get what they want. Conscientious politicians want to know the real story, and they should hear it directly from unionized employees, not filtered through self-serving union executives. 

So let’s put the legal power where it belongs: with the employee.

Many states have enacted labor law reforms that make public-sector union executives more accountable to the employees they are supposed to represent. Florida, Iowa and Wisconsin have even required public-sector unions to run for reelection to continue as representatives of government workplaces. 

Finally, conservatives must resist turning unions into their own political machines. Union power should be for employees, not politics. Yet conservatives have courted union executives with proposed measures — such as sectoral bargaining — that would only further disenfranchise employees. 

The Teamsters did the right thing by refusing to endorse either candidate, despite their members’ strong majority for Donald Trump. Opting against partisan politics respects unionized employees who don’t need a union to speak for them while they try to provide for their families. 

David R. Osborne is the senior fellow of labor policy with the Commonwealth Foundation, Pennsylvania’s free-market think tank.