We now, officially have two pro-union parties:
Any corporation or CEO that gives to Trump or the RNC needs to question which party is really the one for corporate interests.
Its not clear that this indicates a change in the anti-union policies of the GOP. From the article it sounds instead like O’Brein is covering all the bases by asking to speak at both conventions, and so far the GOP is the one that agreed. Maybe the Democrats will get back to him later, or maybe they have a number of other Union representatives speaking and don’t need him. In any case I don’t think this represents a sea change.
If the Pope ever invites Satan in to speak at the Vatican, I’m not buying, “But he asked so nicely.” As a viable excuse. I’d vote that the Pope needs to reconsider whether he’s working the right job.
The Republicans want the Teamsters’ votes just as much as anyone else, If allowing a Teamter’s Union president to give a speech at their convention is going to give them credit with that demographic than why not, they might even throw in a round of polite applause at the end of his speech. But in terms of taking the workers side over the owners in a labor dispute? Fat chance. Their attempts to woo union members will be to highlight their anti-immigrant stance, their support of fossil fuels and support for tariffs.
Teamsters decline to endorse Trump or Harris.
But Musk’s workers are donating heavily to Harris
The GOP’s stance on economic issues has been “evolving” in recent years. A decade ago, raising tariffs on imported goods was anathema to Republicans. Now, it’s Trump’s plan to impose 10 percent tariffs if elected.
Interestingly, a group in PA (among others)have broken away from the main body and have endorsed her. Hope it makes a difference!
Local unions survey members as to their preferences and commonly they’ll support political parties that pledge to do them the least harm. Usually, that will be the more centre-left parties. If that’s who their members support, it’s safe “politically” for the leadership to endorse them. And that’s likely what’s happened with the Pa Local.
The GOP was formed out of pro-business (and bankers, industrialists, etc, basically the old Whig party) joining forces with the abolitionists. It was kind of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” type of party right from the beginning. The business folks really didn’t give two hoots about slavery and the anti-slavery folks really didn’t give two hoots about business and industry. If you look back at Lincoln’s speeches, you can clearly see where he targeted one group or the other in his campaign, depending on who he was speaking to.
For decades, the Republican Party was the party of African-Americans and business folks, but in the late 1800s that began to change as the party grew less and less supportive of African-Americans. The big shift occurred in the 1920s and 1930s, and by the mid 1930s the majority of African-American voters had become Democrats, completely abandoning the party of the Great Emancipator (Abe Lincoln).
The next big shift started in the 1990s. Democrats, for many decades, had been the party of the working man, where Republicans were the party for businesses. But the Democrats abandoned their roots and became more of what their critics call a “social justice warrior” party, emphasizing environmental issues, women’s rights, the rights of minorities, etc. These issues were often at odds with working folks. Environmental issues often threatened to close factories where people worked. Protecting minorities often seemed to many to be protecting illegal aliens over legal working citizens.
Republicans were slow to capitalize on this, because helping out the working folks was at odds with being pro-business, since things that are better for workers tend to mean less profits for the business owners. Paying your workers as little as possible and giving them as few benefits as possible is much better for a company’s bottom line.
But then Trump came along, and capitalized on racism to lure those working folks to his side. There was a lot of resistance to Trump at first in the Republican Party. But once it became clear that he was winning, the Republican Party mostly fell in line behind him.
Since then, the Republican Party is this odd mix of pro-business folks and anti-outsider folks (mostly working-class). It’s definitely not one united party. The pro-business folks are still there, and still want to keep workers salaries and benefits to a minimum. But “white male power” does seem to be the dominant unifying force of the party, which is a definite change from “while male businessman greed” from previous decades. Which is all very ironic for the party of the Great Emancipator.
As for unions, the Democrats have no one but themselves to blame for losing them. Democrats have consistently attacked factories over environmental issues, which has threatened union jobs for decades. “Hey, we want to put all of your union members out of work” tends not to encourage union votes. The “Fuck the environment, we’ll give you jobs” attitude of the Republicans does have a certain appeal to union folks who want to keep their johs. At the same time, the old Republican attitude of “fuck the unions, they are bad for business” is still there, especially among older hard-core Republicans.
It makes for interesting politics.