Posts tagged Sean O’Brien
Do Union Bosses Speak For The Working Class?
September 28, 2026 // Akash Chougule, the president of The Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, puts the mismatch bluntly: roughly 45 percent of union households voted Republican in 2024, while about 87 percent of union political spending benefited Democrats.
Reed Larson built a movement for the long fight
September 24, 2026 // As union membership continues a decadeslong decline, nearing historic lows, union officials are spending billions on politics every election cycle. Traditionally, Democrats have been the main recipients of union political funding. However, major unions, notably the Teamsters, have begun to turn toward populist Republicans to advance their legislative agenda. Teamsters head Sean O’Brien has taken up with Republicans such as Sen. Josh Hawley (MO), who, along with union-label Democrats, introduced the Teamsters-endorsed FLCA into the Senate.
Commentary: Are Unions Rising from the Political Grave?
September 21, 2026 // Here again, however, there may be less than meets the eye. Despite its surprising bipartisan support, the FLCA would raise significant constitutional questions if enacted. By relying on a government-mandated arbitration panel to resolve labor disputes, the law effectively empowers the state to impose contractual terms on private parties—a form of what constitutional lawyers call “state action.” As attorneys Alex MacDonald and Vinnie Vernuccio observe: “[S]tate action opens the door to a slew of constitutional requirements and restrictions, notably to protect rights of free speech and association.”
Op-ed: Sean O’Brien is just Randi Weingarten in a hard hat
September 20, 2026 // Unions across sectors, including the AFL-CIO, the SEIU, and largely private-sector Communications Workers of America, want contracts to cover sex change procedures and abortions, while other unions demand workers submit to diversity, equity, and inclusion programming. Conservatives should not expect organized labor, whose members are now nearly half directly employed by governments, to be anything other than fully committed to Big Government and other entities that support Everything Leftism. There’s no clean way to divide organized labor against itself, so any conservative who wants to empower union bosses needs to know they are empowering all of them, including the ones they know better than to help.
Teamsters president throws down gauntlet to UPS: Strike coming in 2028
September 11, 2026 // Perhaps, the most unusual strike trigger is a new demand that all four union regions, which are governed by supplements to the national master agreement, be allowed to go on strike mid-contract if the parties remain deadlocked on how to resolve union grievances. "It's going to be a battle and we are probably going to strike UPS. I mean, we have to because they don't respect us. They don't do what they're supposed to do on the obligation of the contract. They fight us on everything," O'Brien said on a recent episode of the "Better Bad Ideas" podcast.
Stossel: I Celebrate Labor—Just Not Organized Labor
September 11, 2026 // Unions do protect the jobs of existing workers and sometimes get them raises. But that protection kills jobs later.
Local Teamsters and the union’s Massachusetts-based chief at odds in crucial N.H. Senate race
September 9, 2026 // Brown began by talking about his own longtime membership in performing arts and media union SAG-AFTRA, which he leaned on to burnish his worker credentials when running against Warren. “There’s still people who are contributing dues, which I did for decades,” said Brown. “Chris Pappas has never done that. … What has he done for the unions? Like, what has he actually sponsored and passed that helps unions?” O’Brien noted Pappas’s co-sponsorship of the Faster Labor Contracts Act, a key legislative priority of labor unions. Brown and O’Brien both agreed it was “easy” for Pappas to do so, but when O’Brien asked him whether he would support the legislation, the Republican didn’t give a definitive answer, saying he would “learn more about that particular issue.”
Judge Approves Order Ending Teamsters Union’s Federal Monitor
September 5, 2026 // A federal judge approved an agreement between the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the Trump administration to rollback decades-old oversight of one of the nation’s largest labor groups. Judge Loretta A. Preska’s Thursday approval ends a 37-year monitorship of the Teamsters which was first established in 1989 to eliminate the influence of organized crime in the union. The judge’s sign off comes after the Teamsters and the Justice Department filed an agreement with the US District Court for the Southern District of New York in June asking Preska to eliminate the union’s Independent Investigations Officer position at the end of this year and sunset the Independent Review Officer after three years.
At the Races: Labor Day reds and blues
September 4, 2026 // The union is launching its largest effort ever to mobilize for the midterms: Through door-knocking, get-out-the vote initiatives and regular conversations with co-workers and family members, the AFL-CIO aims to turn out 16 million voters, 2 million more than it says it brought out in 2022. The group has endorsed candidates for House, Senate and governor’s races across the spectrum, from democratic socialists and moderate Democrats to independents and one Republican seeking federal office: Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick.
Bipartisan Bill to Accelerate Labor Contracts Roils Employers
August 6, 2026 // “The notion that I’m going to bargain a fresh contract and think of all the terms and conditions of employment that get woven into a contract, a contract that on the light side might be 10 or 15 pages single space and on the long side 50 pages, that’s just ridiculous,” he said. “People that have never bargained wrote this law.” The bill could also exacerbate timelines instead of accelerating them, as arbitrators and mediators become increasingly overwhelmed with an influx of contract disputes. That could be especially aggravated by ongoing staffing challenges at the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, said Steven M. Bernstein, regional managing partner and Labor Relations Group co-chair at Fisher & Phillips LLC.