Teamsters’ union General President Sean O’Brien will be speaking at the annual convention Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) this coming November in Rosemont, Illinois at the Crown Plaza Hotel. It’s likely to be the largest convention in TDU’s history with possibly over 1,000 delegates and guests in attendance. O’Brien sees the TDU convention as an important step in his reelection campaign and expects to receive their endorsement for a second term in office.

The Teamsters’ leader has gained notoriety. With the possible exception of the various law enforcement unions and the International Longshore Association (ILA), he has earned the reputation as the most pro-Trump union leader in the country. O’Brien helped pave the road to a second term for Trump. He endorsed Trump’s appointees that have wrecked agencies that were created to support worker rights, safe workplaces, and a clean environment. He has also aligned the union with many other reactionary, pro-Fascist political leaders like Vice-President J.D. Vance and Senator Josh Hawley, amongst others.

O’Brien has done Trump’s dirty work in the labor movement. A recent “Open Letter to TDU Members” (I was one of the signers) goes through this abysmal record, and then asks:

How can any organization with the word “democratic” in their title endorse a union leader that has allied himself to a want-to-be dictator proving to be the most anti-worker president in history? In the first seven months of his second term, Trump has gone after unions with a vengeance, following the “Project 2025” playbook without comment and often with support from SOB [Sean O’Brien].

It is important to recognize that the political direction that Sean O’Brien has taken the Teamsters impacts the all working class and oppressed people in the United States. He is a menace to us all.

“Teamsters vs. Everybody” is the mind-boggling, reactionary branding of the union under O’Brien, where solidarity, usually in the labor movement, has been tossed aside. O’Brien’s support for Trump’s trade wars and tariffs have negatively impacted workers across U.S. industries and internationally, including Canadian Teamsters. U.S.-based unions, with few exceptions, have been weak on international solidarity, O’Brien has degraded these tenuous international relationships even further.

This applies most importantly to Palestine, right now. Despite appeals from the Palestinian trade union movement to their U.S. counterparts to carry out job actions to stop the shipment of U.S. manufactured weapons and aircraft to stop the genocide in Gaza, the Teamsters have done nothing and remained silent, even though the Teamster-represented Sikorsky Aircraft is the manufacturer of the heavy-lift King Stallion helicopters, essential to Israeli military operations.

From the Teamsters 1150 Facebook page.

To show his true colors, O’Brien gave a prominent speaking position to News Nation “journalist” Batya Ungar-Sargon, a vocal supporter of Israeli genocide in Gaza, at the recent Teamsters Women Conference in Toronto. As one conference attendee, Nicola Gavins, posted on the official Teamsters Facebook page: “I have to to say how offensive it was that Batya Ungar-Sargon was given a platform to both speak in the opening ceremony and promote her book in the gift bags.”

Is it an exaggeration to say that the menace of Sean O’Brien to us all? I think not. Neither does Trump, key Republicans, and fascist-friendly politicians and commentators, like Tucker Carlson, who’ve given a national platform to him far beyond the Teamsters ranks, and they expect to be rewarded for this.

Picture from X/Twitter.

In an era where one of the major political debates is who represents working class people, Sean O’Brien is delivering us into the clutches of the far right and fascists. He is helping to perpetuate the genocide in Gaza. He needs to be exposed and stopped.

While TDU members will decide whether to endorse him for reelection, those of us fighting the Trump agenda, defending immigrant and workers’ rights, we need to show our opposition to Sean O’Brien when he makes an appearance in Chicago a month from now. This email is a save date note to friends and Comrades in the greater Chicago area. We set a firm date (Friday, November 7th at the moment) and time soon.

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