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eugene scalia
Teamsters President Urged to Cancel Republican Convention Speech
One Teamsters official warned the union leader's scheduled appearance "only normalizes and makes the most anti-union party and president I've seen in my lifetime seem palatable."
Jul 12, 2024
Teamsters general president Sean O'Brien is facing mounting internal pressure to cancel his planned speech to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee next week, with the union's vice president at large accusing the labor leader of kowtowing to a viciously anti-worker party and a GOP presidential hopeful whose first four years in the White House were marked by open attacks on the labor movement.
John Palmer, the Teamsters' vice president at large, wrote in an op-ed in New Politics earlier this week that O'Brien's scheduled appearance at Donald Trump's invitation "only normalizes and makes the most anti-union party and president I've seen in my lifetime seem palatable."
"Does O'Brien intend to remind the anti-union delegates that labor unions exist to ensure that workers—regardless of their race, sex, gender, gender identity, or religion—equally enjoy the security and fairness that a written labor agreement provides?" Palmer asked. "Is he going to state the obvious fact that unions' ability to achieve these goals is being stripped away by the current overzealous Supreme Court? The majority of these justices have been appointed by the same Republicans who will be at this convention."
Palmer, who urged union members to demand that O'Brien cancel his planned convention appearance, isn't the only Teamsters official who has publicly raised concerns over what one commentator described as O'Brien's "Trumpian tilt."
"We will not allow the working-class labor movement to be destroyed by a scab masquerading as a pro-union advocate after doing everything in his power to destroy the very fabric of unions," James Curbeam, national chairman of the Teamsters National Black Caucus, wrote in a letter to Teamsters members after O'Brien announced a meeting with Trump earlier this year.
O'Brien has also met with President Joe Biden.
During his first term in the White House, Trump moved aggressively to gut worker protections and stacked federal courts and key agencies with anti-union officials. Trump's two labor secretaries, Alexander Acosta and Eugene Scalia, were both hostile to organized labor.
The Republican Party more broadly has long worked in concert with its corporate allies to weaken organized labor through so-called right-to-work laws and other means—a decadeslong effort that has had devastating material consequences for workers across the country.
Capital & Mainreported Friday that Republicans' upcoming convention in Milwaukee has shined a spotlight on the Wisconsin GOP's "anti-union agenda." Former Gov. Scott Walker, a notorious enemy of organized labor, is a delegate to the Republican National Convention.
"We will not allow the working-class labor movement to be destroyed by a scab masquerading as a pro-union advocate after doing everything in his power to destroy the very fabric of unions."
O'Brien is scheduled to address the convention in a primetime address Monday night. A Teamsters spokeswoman told The New York Times earlier this week that O'Brien "looks forward to addressing a crowd that hasn't traditionally been open to union voices."
"But that is what democracy is all about," she added.
The Guardian's Michael Sainato noted Friday that O'Brien's appearance in Milwaukee will be the first time a Teamsters president has ever spoken at the Republican convention.
"In January 2024, the Teamsters PAC donated $45,000 to both the Democratic and Republican national committees, marking its first large donation to the Republican Party in years," Sainato wrote.
The American Prospect's Harold Meyerson wrote Thursday that "it's always possible that O'Brien may use his allotted speaking time to ask the Republicans to adopt the pro-union initiatives that Democrats support and that Republican members of Congress have to a person opposed, like the PRO Act, which would enable workers to unionize without fear of being fired, or raising the national minimum wage from its current $7.25."
"If O'Brien really wants to do the nation a service, he might speak forcefully against Trump's commitment to deporting undocumented immigrants," Meyerson added. "In my years covering labor, I've met a number of Teamsters who are themselves undocumented—the very workers and their families whom Trump has continually vowed to arrest, lock up, and deport. It's atop Trump's to-do list. It's hard to see how this would be good for the Teamsters."
O'Brien's conciliatory posture toward Trump and the Republican Party stands in sharp contrast with the approach taken by United Auto Workers (UAW) president Shawn Fain, who has called Trump a "scab" and a pawn of the billionaire class of which he is a part.
The UAW endorsed Biden—the first sitting U.S. president to join striking workers on a picket line—in January, but the union is now grappling with mounting calls for the incumbent to end his reelection campaign following his disastrous debate performance against Trump last month.
Reutersreported Friday that Fain "met with the union's executive board late on Thursday to discuss his deep concerns with President Joe Biden's ability to defeat Donald Trump in the November election."
"Fain called together top officials at the nearly 400,000-member union to discuss concerns and what the union's options are," the news agency reported, citing unnamed sources. "The union is considering its next steps."
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Trump Labor Department Says It May Actively Defend Meatpacking Companies Over Workers in Covid-19 Lawsuits
"We have a president forcing hazardous meat plants to reopen, threatening workers' health. We have a Labor Department siding with corporations over workers' safety. Disgusting."
Apr 29, 2020
The stated mission of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is to protect workers, but the agency is signaling that it may actively defend meatpacking corporations against workplace safety lawsuits filed by employees who contract Covid-19 on the job if the companies show they made a "good faith" effort to comply with federal health guidelines.
"We all need to stop for a second to think about how crazy this is. OSHA is the agency that is supposed to protect people at work. Under this administration, it is now deciding it will defend bad employers in court because the employer 'tried.'"
--Nate Ring, labor attorney
In a statement Tuesday shortly after President Donald Trump invoked the Defense Production Act (DPA) to keep meat processing plants open amid the coronavirus pandemic, Solicitor of Labor Kate O'Scannlain and OSHA principal deputy secretary Loren Sweatt urged meatpacking employers to comply with the agency's non-binding safety guidelines.
But O'Scannlain and Sweatt said companies will have leeway to flout standards that they determine are not "feasible in the context of specific plants and circumstances," provided that they "document why that is the case."
"Where a meat, pork, or poultry processing employer operating pursuant to the president's invocation of the DPA has demonstrated good faith attempts to comply with the Joint Meat Processing Guidance and is sued for alleged workplace exposures," said O'Scannlain and Sweatt, "the Department of Labor will consider a request to participate in that litigation in support of the employer's compliance program."
\u201cWe all need to stop for a second to think about how crazy this is. #OSHA is the agency that is supposed to protect people at work. Under this Administration, it is incredibly understaffed and is now deciding it will defend bad employers in court because the employer \u201ctried.\u201d\u201d— Nate Ring (@Nate Ring) 1588168136
Jordan Barab, former deputy assistant secretary at OSHA, said Wednesday that the Labor Department's statement constitutes "a free pass to meat and poultry processors."
In an interview on MSNBC Tuesday night, former OSHA senior policy adviser Debbie Berkowitz slammed her former agency for abdicating its responsibility to safeguard workers.
"The agency has essentially abandoned its responsibility to ensure that employers keep workers safe from Covid-19."
--Debbie Berkowitz, National Employment Law Project
"OSHA... has chosen--this is a choice--not to enforce any requirements in the meat industry to protect workers," said Berkowitz, who is currently the director of the worker health and safety program at the National Employment Law Project. "The [meatpacking] industry looked at these recommendations--they're voluntary--and in the end didn't implement them."
"There's a real price to pay for this kind of, I would call it government malfeasance," Berkowitz added.
Meatpacking plants across the country have become coronavirus hot spots in April. The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), the largest meatpacking union in the U.S., said in a statement Tuesday that at least 20 meatpacking workers have died of Covid-19 and more than 5,000 "have been hospitalized or are showing symptoms."
"The reality is that these workers are putting their lives on the line every day to keep our country fed during this deadly outbreak," said UFCW president Marc Perrone. "For the sake of all our families, we must prioritize the safety and security of these workers."
Critics warned that Trump's executive order mandating meatpacking plants remain open amid the pandemic could lead to another surge in Covid-19 infections and deaths among workers in the industry. According tothe Washington Post, at least 20 meatpacking plants have closed in recent weeks due to coronavirus outbreaks at the facilities.
"We have a president forcing hazardous meat plants to reopen, threatening workers' health," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) tweeted Wednesday. We have a Labor Department siding with corporations over workers' safety. Disgusting."
"Maybe this is too 'radical,'" Sanders added, "but we need a White House that protects public health during a pandemic."
\u201cWe have a president forcing hazardous meat plants to reopen, threatening workers' health.\n\nWe have a Labor Department siding with corporations over workers' safety.\n\nDisgusting. Maybe this is too "radical," but we need a White House that protects public health during a pandemic.\u201d— Bernie Sanders (@Bernie Sanders) 1588178012
Between January and early April, OSHA was flooded with thousands of worker complaints accusing employers of violating federal coronavirus guidelines and endangering employee safety by failing to provide adequate protective equipment.
But the agency, overseen by Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, has thus far refused to use its authority to force employers to comply with Covid-19 safety guidelines. OSHA is also massively understaffed with vacancies at 42% of its top career leadership positions, including such crucial spots as director of enforcement and director of whistleblower protection.
"OSHA's mission to protect workers in the most dangerous jobs has been seriously compromised under the Trump administration," Berkowitz said in a statement Tuesday. "The agency has essentially abandoned its responsibility to ensure that employers keep workers safe from Covid-19."
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Smithfield Is a Symptom of Trump's America
This new crisis has brought a bright spotlight to how little Trump—and his administration—values the lives of working people.
Apr 27, 2020
In Sioux Falls, South Dakota, over 600 people connected to a Smithfield pork plant have contracted the COVID-19 virus--and two workers have died. Workers at the plant had access to hand sanitizer only after the first confirmed case. Then, even after it was clear COVID-19 was present in the plant, Smithfield offered a "responsibility bonus" of $500 to employees that didn't miss work in April.
Smithfield should have shown some responsibility to their workers and taken immediate action to keep their workers safe. They did not. Now, two workers have lost their lives, hundreds of people are sick, and the company shut the plant down. They have since announced the closure of two other plants in Wisconsin and Missouri.
American corporations have again and again gotten away with putting workers in harm's way.
Unsafe working conditions aren't a new thing to the hundreds of thousands of workers in America's meatpacking industry. The meat industry has historically been a bad actor in safeguarding workers on the job. And regulators have done little to hold companies accountable for their blatant disregard for the health and lives of their workers.
Under Donald Trump, things have gone from bad to worse, and not just in the meatpacking industry. Fatalities in the workplace reached a 10-year-high in 2018. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is toothless under this president. The swamp full of corporate shills he has assembled in his cabinet includes Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, a lawyer with a long history of busting unions and filing lawsuits against worker safeguards on behalf of his corporate clients. As Secretary of Labor, Scalia oversees OSHA.
Scalia may be the fox guarding the henhouse. But, Donald Trump is the man who put the fox there.
This new crisis has brought a bright spotlight to how little Trump--and his administration--values the lives of working people. OSHA has done next to nothing to protect workers in the age of COVID-19. The agency has broad power and the authority to help workers right now. But, under Trump, it has done nothing but put out statements and take only the bare minimum action that allows it to say that it at least did something. Instead of issuing a set of emergency rules to keep workers safe, OSHA has published some guidance that industry can--and likely will--ignore. Just like industry often ignores the paltry fines levied when workers die.
American corporations have again and again gotten away with putting workers in harm's way. It took pressure from the public in the form of drive-by protests for Smithfield to protect workers by shutting down the plant to stop the spread. Where was OSHA? Why didn't the agency step in to protect workers?
We can't solely rely on companies to do right by workers but there are good actors out there. For example, public utility company American Water--which provides services to 14 million Americans in 46 states--has been working with its union members from the Utility Workers Union of America to ensure the water keeps running but also that workers are protected on the job. They have implemented preventative measures, including only allowing single occupants in all work vehicles, implementing A/B shifts (one week on, one week off) based on outbreaks by location, and creating a hardship fund that employees can apply for to receive resources.
Unfortunately, not all companies live up to the responsibility to protect their workers. Congress created OSHA to protect workers and ensure they didn't have to rely on their company's good graces to put live-saving measures in place. Under Trump, the agency is missing in action.
If Donald Trump won't make OSHA do its job, Congress must step in immediately and force it to protect workers.
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