The main national organization of the Teamsters labor union may have refused to endorse a candidate for the 2024 presidential election, but that hasn’t stopped local organizations from doing so.
According to the Kamala Harris campaign, nearly 20 Teamsters local unions and joint councils representing about 1 million Teamsters-affiliated workers have endorsed the vice president in recent days, including unions in key battleground states such as Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The endorsement comes after the International Board of Trucking and Other Trucking Association (IBOT) broke with precedent this week by announcing that it would not officially endorse any presidential candidate, even though the union has generally supported Democrats in recent presidential elections.
“Neither major candidate has been able to make a serious commitment to our union to always put workers’ interests above big business,” Teamsters President Sean O’Brien said in a statement. O’Brien spoke at the Republican National Convention and said he had not received a similar invitation from Democrats.
Harris has broad support from other union groups, including the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest union, the Service Employees International Union and the Culinary Arts Union, which are traditionally Democratic-leaning groups that represent a diverse range of workers.
But the Teamsters have traditionally been associated with white working-class voters, a key voting bloc that could determine the outcome of November’s election.
While the Teamsters’ failure to publicly endorse the group was a clear setback for Harris, the move did not prevent individual Teamsters unions from issuing their own statements of support.
Kevin Moore, president of the Michigan Teamsters, said the state chapter’s decision to endorse Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, was unanimous among its board of directors.
“The Michigan Joint Council and the Teamsters understand that it’s too important for us to give a neutral endorsement,” Moore told mid-Michigan NBC News affiliate NBC25. “We’re going to fully support Kamala Harris and Tim Walz … our members have said so.”
Moore was scheduled to campaign for Harris in Michigan on Friday.
Meanwhile, Bill Carroll, president of Teamsters Joint Council 39, which represents 15,000 workers in Wisconsin, said “a portion” of his union’s 15,000 members support Trump.
Nonetheless, this contingent supported Harris and Walz.
“There’s nothing that the Republican Party in Wisconsin has done that would really benefit unions or working families as a whole,” Carroll told radio station WTAQ.
In a statement this week, James P. Hoffa, chairman emeritus of the Teamsters and son of former Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, said the 2024 election is “too important to our union to afford not to fulfill our obligations.”
“There’s only one candidate in this race who has supported working families and unions throughout her career: Vice President Kamala Harris,” he said.
It’s unclear how the latest wave of endorsements will ultimately affect Harris’ chances. An internal poll conducted by the Teamsters showed an overwhelming majority of union members support Trump, while earlier polls showed a majority in favor of President Joe Biden before he dropped out of the race.
Trump welcomed the move not to endorse it.
“The Teamsters have a lot of influence,” he told reporters Wednesday. “The Democrats can’t believe it. It was always an automatic thing that the Democrats were going to get the Teamsters, and they said, ‘We’re not going to support the Democrats this year.’ So it was an honor for me.”
