May be the main national body of the Teamsters union refused to support the candidate for the 2024 presidential election, but that didn’t stop local chapters from doing so.
About two dozen local Teamster unions and joint councils representing nearly 1 million Teamster-affiliated workers, including those in the key battleground states of Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, have endorsed the vice president in recent days, according to the Kamala Harris campaign.
Support comes in the form of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBOT). he said broke precedent this week by not issuing official presidential approval. Teams have generally supported Democrats for president in recent races.
“No major candidate has been able to make a strong commitment to our union to ensure that the interests of working people always come before Big Business,” Teamsters General 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 nation’s largest labor group, the AFL-CIO, the Service Employees International Union and the Culinary Workers Union. These are traditionally Democratic groups with a diverse set of workers.
However, the Teamsters are more traditionally associated with white working-class voters — a key voting block to determine November’s outcome.
While it was a clear setback for Harris that the teams weren’t officially endorsed, the move didn’t stop individual Team members from submitting their own statements of support.
Michigan Teamsters President Kevin Moore said the state unit’s decision to support Harris and his running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Waltz, was a unanimous decision by his board.
“The Joint Council and Teams of the State of Michigan know that providing a neutral agreement is very important to us.” Moore told NBC News affiliate NBC 25 cMichigan entrance. “We’re going to do full force endorsements for Kamala Harris and Tim Waltz … our members are telling us that.”
Moore was scheduled to speak at a Harris campaign stop in Michigan on Friday.
Meanwhile, Bill Carroll, head of Teamsters Joint Council 39, which represents 15,000 workers in Wisconsin, said “some” of the union’s 15,000 members support Trump.
Nevertheless, it was uniform which approves Harris and Walz.
“There hasn’t been any action by Republicans in Wisconsin that really benefits organized labor or working families in general,” Carroll said. he said the radio station WTAQ.
James P. Hoffa, Teamsters president emeritus and son of former Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, said in a statement this week that the 2024 election is “too important for our union to fail.”
“There is only one candidate in this race who has supported working families and unions throughout her career, and that is Vice President Kamala Harris,” he said.
It is unclear how the latest confirmed horoscope will affect Harris’ election chances. An internal poll by the Teamsters showed a large majority of its members favored Trump, although an earlier poll showed President Joe Biden with a majority of support before he dropped out of the race.
Trump welcomed the non-endorsement.
He told reporters on Wednesday: “The Teams carry a lot of weight. The Democrats can’t believe it. Look, it was always automatic for the Democrats to buy the Teams, and they said, ‘We’re not going to support the Democrats this year, which was an honor.’