There is No Such Thing as a Pro-Labor Conservative

Editorial from the Libertarian Socialist Caucus attacking the appearance of Teamster president Sean O’Brien at the recent Republican National Convention.

by Jesse M.

Like everyone on the Left, I see no difference between the Democrats and Republicans, so I have no problem with Teamster president Sean O’Brien speaking to the Republican National Convention.

Just kidding! I’m an anarchist, not a sucker.

While there were some cathartic moments in O’Brien’s speech, where he lambasts Republicans for not supporting workers, it seems like a part of a larger project of his to try to create some sort of “pro-labor conservative.” He said that an essay by noted dipshit Sen. Josh Hawley was “100% on point.”

Hawley, one of those salt-of-the-earth pro-worker Republicans who didn’t learn enough about the Common Man at Stanford and decided to take advanced courses on the subject at Yale Law School, had this analysis of American business in the piece O’Brien linked to:

“The C-suite long ago sold out the United States, shuttering factories in the homeland and gutting American jobs, while using the profits to push diversity, equity, and inclusion and the religion of the trans flag.”

It’s fun to call Hawley a dipshit (which is why I already have), but the unfortunate truth is that he’s not really this stupid. He doesn’t truly think corporate America is “using the profits to push diversity, equity, and inclusion,” because profit is the money the investor class keeps for themselves, by definition. He was, at Stanford, a student of history; unfortunately, while some of us read history and see how fascists across Europe co-opted worker movements for their own purposes and thought, “wow! That’s really bad,” Hawley was reading it as an instruction manual.

“Pro-labor conservative” is a contradiction in terms. Being “pro-labor” means being an advocate for all workers, not a select, chosen few.

Hawley and O’Brien are trying to say that they’re pro-worker… but not those trans workers. Not any worker who gets pregnant and needs health care, either. Not any workers who aren’t Christian, and of the Christians, not the ones who immigrated here. Hawley doesn’t even believe in the right of public sector workers to unionize. America’s largest union, the NEA, is in the public sector.

So that’s your pro-labor conservatism: saying you stand for workers, but then sectioning off more and more workers until the slim remainder left are the cis, straight, white, male, USA-born (and only in private-sector workplaces). And we’d love to see O’Brien’s organizing charts of the workplaces he wants to organize, like Amazon, whose ALU affiliated with the Teamsters, when the only votes the union will get are in that group.

This is what happens when the president of a labor union is held up as some sort of savior figure: he sucks. He goes out seeking personal fame instead of amplifying the voices of the members of his union.

The demonstrable fact that Democrats are a miserable excuse for a political party, and that unions spending so much money, staff time, and worker-leader capacity hasn’t led to the results we need, isn’t an excuse to go hang out with bigots instead. It means go do something else.

When Teamsters are organizing new members, like any union, they make sure workers know the union isn’t some third party, like their bosses are claiming. It’s not run as a dictatorship by a Hoffa any more, it’s a democratic institution. The union is the workers, organized together.

That’s the promise. Stop fucking breaking it. Stop throwing your LGBT workers, your workers of color, and any workers in solidarity with them under the bus.

Are you a rank-and-file Teamster, or any other union member, who wants to push your union to live up to its values? Or are you one of the 93% of private-sector workers not represented by a union, but want to organize one? Join DSA, meet with other workers near you, and get trained. Either take Labor Notes’ “Secrets of a Successful Organizer” training online, or in person with a group. It’s how I went from being a retail worker who was technically in a union, but had no idea what it meant, to a union organizer.

Are you a DSA member who agrees that the Democrats being terrible is a reason to put our energy into something other than electoral politics? Join our caucus.