O’Brien acknowledges Biden has been a “great” president for organized labor. But he told the Globe that Biden hasn’t delivered on all his promises and the Teamsters are worried their backing is being taken for granted.
Thirteen former Black and Hispanic employees for the Teamsters International Union filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against the union and its president, Sean O’Brien, alleging racial discrimination over their firings after O’Brien assumed the helm in March 2022.
…
The lawsuit claimed that “rather than maintaining or increasing diversity at Teamsters, IBT [International Brotherhood of Teamsters] fired more than a dozen people of color and turned the Organizing Department from a diverse department into a majority white department”.
The terminations “set back the Organizing Department’s goals of effectively recruiting and organizing non-whites”, it alleged, “in favor of bolstering the majority white membership and leadership of the union. In total, Teamsters terminated 72.73% of the department’s staffers who were people of color, while firing only 28.57% of white staffers. Teamsters then proceeded to hire new staff members who were 73.33% white.”
The lawsuit also claimed that O’Brien “publicly humiliated” the plaintiffs in the case, claiming they were fired because they were “bad apples” and were “lazy” in their work.
e; alright, since someone else brought it up, breaking the railroad strike in 2022 probably didn’t do Biden any favors, but the only difference between what Biden did there and what Trump would have done is Trump probably would’ve tried to find a way to have a SWAT team raid union offices or some crap when he did it, and no union president (whose whole job is dealing with political coalitions and compromises) is going to be dumb enough not to know this, so I maintain racism is the only thing that explains O’Brien’s behavior.
e2; Also, every other union saw what Biden did with the rail strike, and y’know what a ton of them did? Endorsed him because they’re not getting anyone better this election and they know it.
The secret ingredient is racism
e; alright, since someone else brought it up, breaking the railroad strike in 2022 probably didn’t do Biden any favors, but the only difference between what Biden did there and what Trump would have done is Trump probably would’ve tried to find a way to have a SWAT team raid union offices or some crap when he did it, and no union president (whose whole job is dealing with political coalitions and compromises) is going to be dumb enough not to know this, so I maintain racism is the only thing that explains O’Brien’s behavior.
e2; Also, every other union saw what Biden did with the rail strike, and y’know what a ton of them did? Endorsed him because they’re not getting anyone better this election and they know it.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240716183809/https://www.commondreams.org/news/unions-endorse-biden-2024
https://web.archive.org/web/20240716183830/https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/23/politics/biden-building-trades-union-endorsement/index.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20240716183834/https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/united-auto-workers-union-expected-endorse-biden-rcna135444