And Trump will take away Teamster’s pension if he can put it in his pocket.
The New York Times
Teamsters Won’t Endorse a Candidate for President in 2024
The Teamsters president, Sean O’Brien, has shown an openness to former President Donald J. Trump, dividing the powerful union. Neither candidate will be the beneficiary of its considerable organizing muscle.
Sept. 18, 2024
MORE FROM NYT BELOW
Nixon & Republicans were in tight brothers with the Mafia. When Nixon was president the Mafia controlled local Republican committees in SE Pennsylvania.
The son of a mob-connected Philly area builder told me his dad had Frank Rizzo and Angelo Bruno in his kitchen for mussels & spaghetti. Then instantly got an I shouldn't have said that look on his face. Don’t know if Rizzo & Bruno allegedly were in his kitchen at the same time. He was a nice guy. Not a mob guy.
Republican anti-crime Philly DA Arlin Spector never uttered the words Angelo Bruno. After Bruno was killed ricotta cheese that wasn’t Maggio was in supermarkets. Maggio was Bruno’s brother in law. Bruno controlled supermarkets.
Theodore “Teddy” Rubino was Chester County Commissioner and Republican Party Chair he ran Chester County as Angelo Bruno ran the Delaware Valley. Business owners would put a “tribute” into Rubino’s desk drawer when he left the room. If a business owner did not pay “insurance” to Rubino his business could be in trouble.
"Then, in 1977, Mr. Rubino pleaded guilty to having extorted $6,400 from architects who were awarded a $130,000 contract to convert a former West Chester hospital into a county government annex….
As part of Mr. Rubino’s plea agreement, prosecutors read into the record statements that the FBI had taken from businessmen and politicians who had dealt with Mr. Rubino. They indicated that he had established set prices for those doing business with the county, ranging from milk supplies to the leases on court offices. Some of the money went to the county GOP.”
Friday, November 1, 2019
Maybe watch “The Irishman” again.
The Irishman | Final Trailer | Netflix
FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES:
“The leadership of the 1.3-million-member International Brotherhood of Teamsters said in a statement Wednesday it would not back a presidential candidate, a blow to Vice President Kamala Harris, who has the endorsement of the country’s other powerful labor unions.
The decision by the Teamsters board, while short of an endorsement for former President Donald J. Trump, vindicated Mr. Trump’s strategy of wooing the union’s president, Sean O’Brien, a leader who has repeatedly signaled his willingness to chart his own path. The board’s vote was 14 for not endorsing and three for Ms. Harris. No board member backed Mr. Trump…
Mr. O’Brien’s equivalence between the two candidates could be seen as a boost for Mr. Trump, especially considering the same statement noted that Ms. Harris backed pro-organizing legislation, known as the PRO Act, while Mr. Trump refused to commit to vetoing so-called right-to-work legislation, which would prohibit mandatory union dues payments from workers who opt out of a unionized workplace.
But the former president worked hard to curry Mr. O’Brien’s favor, inviting him to his private club and residence, Mar-a-Lago, this summer and then granting him his wish for a prime-time speaking slot at the Republican National Convention in July. The Democratic convention rebuffed him.
Mr. O’Brien’s openness to Mr. Trump — who angered other unions by appointing anti-labor members to the National Labor Relations Board and praising Elon Musk recently for a willingness to fire striking workers — has badly divided the union.
The Teamsters’ National Black Caucus, more than a half-dozen Teamsters locals, and members of the union’s national leadership have endorsed Ms. Harris over Mr. O’Brien’s objections. Opponents of the former president have organized a Teamsters Against Trump effort that has undermined Mr. O’Brien two years into his first term as president. After the national union declined to endorse on Wednesday, two Teamsters joint governing councils in the West, which cover 300,000 workers including those in the swing state of Nevada, announced they would back Ms. Harris. A number of other locals followed suit, including union locals in Michigan and Wisconsin.
The union endorsed President Biden in 2020, as well as the Democrats Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.
“I’m very disappointed that our international leadership has chosen not to stand up to a bully and an anti-union candidate,” James Curbeam, chairman of the Teamsters’ National Black Caucus, said in an interview Wednesday…
And the Harris campaign took an unexpected swipe at Teamsters leaders after the decision.
“As the vice president told the Teamsters on Monday, when she is elected president, she will look out for the Teamsters rank-and-file no matter what,” Lauren Hitt, a Harris campaign spokeswoman, said, leaving out the top brass.
Ahead of the decision, the Harris campaign tried to mitigate the blow, noting that of the 10 largest unions in the country, only the Teamsters had not backed her, and that the umbrella labor organization, the A.F.L.-C.I.O., represents about 10 times the number of workers in the Teamsters and is working hard on Ms. Harris’s behalf…
The decision not to endorse reflected the divisions within the union’s rank-and-file. Leaders who backed Ms. Harris noted that the Biden administration had done much to like. Mr. Biden’s Covid relief bill, the American Rescue Plan, included the one measure that Teamsters leaders wanted the most — a huge bailout of pension plans that will restore retirement accounts at the union for three decades.
“When we were all worried about what was going to happen with our pensions, I remember watching Kamala Harris cast that vote, and there was nothing but applause all around,” said Michelle Espinoza, 51, a member of Teamsters Local 135 in Indianapolis who drives a semi-truck cross country with her husband every week. (Ms. Harris broke the tie on the American Rescue Plan.)
The $1 trillion infrastructure bill, the $280 billion measure to rekindle a domestic semiconductor industry and the Inflation Reduction Act and its $370 billion for clean energy to combat climate change all had pro-union provisions, including measures that mandated union-scale wages and tilted toward union apprenticeship and training programs.
But working-class voters, especially white men, have favored Mr. Trump, a point Ms. Harris conceded on Monday when she told Teamsters leaders that she understood the union’s rank-and-file was looking at issues beyond labor, such as immigration. She implored Teamsters officials to tell members that she had backed a bipartisan border security bill that was negotiated in the Senate and then killed at the behest of Mr. Trump.
MORE AT:
The New York Times
Teamsters Won’t Endorse a Candidate for President in 2024
The Teamsters president, Sean O’Brien, has shown an openness to former President Donald J. Trump, dividing the powerful union. Neither candidate will be the beneficiary of its considerable organizing muscle.
Sept. 18, 2024
I knew United Steel Workers Union members who voted for the extreme anti-union President Reagan because Reagan was racist & supported the National Rifle Association.
"President Reagan's proposal on fund withdrawal is expected to set off a major fight in Congress. Contrasting Arguments
Labor unions, consumer groups and some organizations representing elderly people say that pension plans would be weakened by any change permitting employers to withdraw money for their own purposes."
FROM:
Feb. 3, 1987
REAGAN SET TO ASK SWEEPING CHANGES FOR PENSION RULES
The New York Times Archives
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