TROY, MI – It’s hard to find the right word to describe how Jim Hoffa, the man who rebuilt the modern Teamsters’ union, felt when he learned that his union wouldn’t make an endorsement in this year’s presidential race. Disgusted might come closest.
‘It doesn’t make any sense. None,” he told me. “Biden has been the best president for labor in my time, without a doubt, and I served with five presidents, and she (Kamala Harris) was right there with him. Then you’ve got (Donald) Trump saying it would be a good idea to fire striking workers. This makes no sense.”
What’s more, the legendary labor leader said, was that failing to endorse is “a big help to Trump, more than people realize.” True, he noted, various Teamster locals have strongly endorsed the Democratic nominee, locals that include more than half the members.
“But they don’t have any money. Not the kind of money and manpower the national union has,” Hoffa said. When his Teamsters endorsed Joe Biden four years ago, it was worth millions of dollars to the campaign. The union made donations, advertised in various media, and sent members to work on the campaign.
That paid off nationally. Exit polling on Election Night found that union members backed Biden nationally by 56 percent to 40 percent for Donald Trump. In Michigan, a state Biden carried by less than three percent, an ABC News poll found 62 percent of unionized workers supported him.
Though the percentage of workers in unions has declined since the 1950s, it is still 14 percent, enough to make a difference. Hoffa, son of perhaps the most notorious labor leader in history, Jimmy Hoffa, a man now remembered mainly for his mysterious 1975 disappearance, is an incredible story himself.
Though he still reveres his father, professionally the two men were, in many ways, opposites. Now 83, the younger Hoffa, a labor attorney, was elected president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in 1998 and was reelected four times, retiring in 2022.
He likes to say that under his leadership, “we got both the government and the mob out of the Teamsters,” ending federal supervision and keeping the union free from corruption.
Under his leadership, the Teamsters, who now have about 1.4 million members, didn’t suffer the huge declines other unions have, such as the UAW, the United Autoworkers Union, which now has barely one-fourth of the membership it did in 1979.
Though the elder Hoffa sometimes endorsed Republicans like Richard Nixon, in part because of his famous feud with the Kennedys, James Hoffa firmly aligned the union with the Democratic Party.
“You know, everyone says they are for jobs, but Biden always said he was going to create ‘good-paying union jobs,’” Hoffa said. “He got it; he felt it.” He added, “I don’t know Harris as well, but I know her — we worked with her when she was attorney general in California on misrepresentation issues,” where companies were trying to pass independent contractors off as employees. “She was great.”
But new Teamsters president Sean O’Brien and Hoffa are bitter enemies. When Hoffa decided not to run for another term in 2021, he backed another candidate. The men’s feud goes back to 2017, when Hoffa removed O’Brien from his role as lead negotiator during contract talks with UPS.
When O’Brien came to power in 2022, he immediately sacked 80 apparent Hoffa loyalists who worked at Teamsters’ headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Regardless of what the two Teamsters’ leaders think of each other, the Teamsters’ decision not to endorse Kamala Harris is somewhat baffling, as was O’Brien’s decision to speak at the Republican National Convention in July. (After that, the Democrats reportedly didn’t invite him to their convention.)
Other labor leaders have rallied around the Democratic nominee, led by popular UAW head Shawn Fain, who spoke at the convention wearing a shirt that said “Trump is a scab. Vote Harris.”
So why didn’t the Teamsters endorse the Democrat? It’s hard to believe that the lingering feud between the past and present presidents played any role. In an article for Slate, Steven Greenhouse, who covered labor for decades for the New York Times, called the decision a “lose-lose” for the Teamsters.
He said it made union president O’Brien look “weak, short-sighted and feckless.” The official reason the Teamsters refused an endorsement was that neither candidate would pledge never to interfere in a nationwide strike. Greenhouse noted that no candidate could make that promise if public safety might be at risk.
When she met with Teamsters’ leadership last month, Harris told them she would have their backs whether they endorsed her or not. “I’m sure she meant it,” Hoffa said.
“But if you are in a room with two guys and one was for you and the other wasn’t, well, human nature may play a role.”
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(Editor’s Note: A version of this column also appeared in the Toledo Blade.)
