The main national body of the Teamsters union may have declined to endorse a candidate for the 2024 presidential election, but that hasn\u2019t stopped local units from doing so.<\/p>\n
According to the Kamala Harris campaign, almost two dozen local Teamsters unions and joint councils representing approximately 1 million Teamster-affiliated workers have endorsed the vice president in recent days, including ones in the key battleground states of Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.<\/p>\n
The support comes as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBOT) said this week that it was breaking with precedent by not issuing an official presidential endorsement. The teamsters have generally backed Democrats for president in recent races.<\/p>\n
\u201cNeither major candidate was able to make serious commitments to our union to ensure the interests of working people are always put before Big Business,\u201d Teamsters General President Sean O\u2019Brien said in a statement. O\u2019Brien spoke at the Republican National Convention and has stated he did not receive a similar invite from the Democrats. <\/p>\n
Harris enjoys broad support from other union groups including the AFL-CIO, the nation\u2019s largest labor group, the Service Employees International Union and the Culinary Workers Union. These are traditionally Democratic-aligned groups with a diverse set of workers.<\/p>\n
However, the Teamsters are more traditionally associated with white working-class voters \u2014 a key voting bloc for determining November\u2019s outcome.<\/p>\n
And while the Teamsters\u2019 official non-endorsement was a clear setback for Harris, the action has not stopped individual Teamsters units from offering their own statements of support. <\/p>\n
Kevin Moore, president of the Michigan Teamsters, said the state unit\u2019s decision to endorse Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, was unanimous among its board. <\/p>\n
\u2018The Joint Council and Teamsters of Michigan know it\u2019s too important for us to do a neutral endorsement,\u2019 Moore told NBC 25, an NBC News affiliate in central Michigan. \u2018We\u2019re going to do a full force endorsement for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz \u2026 our members are telling us that.\u201d <\/p>\n
Moore was slated to make an appearance at a Harris campaign stop in Michigan on Friday. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Bill Carroll, head of Teamsters Joint Council 39, which represents 15,000 workers in Wisconsin, said \u2018some\u2019 of its 15,000 unit members support Trump. <\/p>\n
Nevertheless, the unit was endorsing Harris and Walz. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere really hasn\u2019t been any type of action that the Republicans in Wisconsin have done that have really benefited organized labor or working families in general,\u2019 Carroll told the radio station WTAQ. <\/p>\n
In a statement this week, James P. Hoffa, president emeritus of the Teamsters and the son of former Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, said the 2024 election was \u201ctoo important for our union to not do its duty.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is only one candidate in this race that has supported working families and unions throughout their career and that is Vice President Kamala Harris,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
It is not clear what impact the latest constellation of endorsements will ultimately have on Harris\u2019 election chances. An internal poll conducted by the Teamsters had shown its members overwhelmingly favoring Trump, even as an earlier poll showed majority support for President Joe Biden before he dropped out of the race.<\/p>\n
Trump has hailed the non-endorsement. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Teamsters carry a lot of weight,\u2019 he told reporters Wednesday. \u2018The Democrats cannot believe it. Look, it was always automatic that Democrats get the Teamsters, and they said, \u2018We won\u2019t endorse the Democrats this year,\u2019 so that was an honor for me.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The main national body of the Teamsters union may have declined to endorse a candidate for the 2024 presidential election, but that hasn\u2019t stopped local units from doing so. According to the Kamala Harris campaign, almost two dozen local Teamsters unions and joint councils representing approximately 1 million Teamster-affiliated workers have endorsed the vice president […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9900,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}