Teamsters President Sean O’Brien’s “pragmatic pivot” may be draped in the ragged banner of bipartisanship, but showering cash on the Republican architects of labor’s tomb is more than dumb.
O’Brien would be wise to recall that October 22 will be the 44th anniversary of the day that the U.S. Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) decertified the U.S. Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) trade union.
For the second year running, the union’s D.R.I.V.E. PAC has funneled $5,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee—a Judas kiss atop $62,000 for two dozen GOP congressional wolves eyeing battleground districts.
Pennsylvania’s Bresnahan, New York’s Malliotakis, Ohio’s Joyce—these are the foot soldiers of a party whose 2025 blueprint vows to incinerate worker protections. O’Brien calls it “crossing party lines.” History calls it amnesia.
The Ghost of PATCO Haunts Every Penny
Rewind to 1981: Reagan, fresh off endorsements from PATCO and the Teamsters, grinned like a Cheshire cat as he shattered the air traffic controllers’ union.
Eleven thousand federal workers—federal employees whose union endorsed him, mind you—tossed onto the ash heap for daring to strike. Reagan’s “generous” offer? A raise of half what PATCO demanded, with a flat rejection of their call for a 32-hour work week. His real offer: a firing squad.
Today, O’Brien parrots the same dead language: “Our members’ interests cut across party lines,” chirps a union spokesperson.
Tell that to Edna Robinson, stranded at Union Station in ’81, screaming into the void: “I sympathize with them, but I still hate them!”
Sympathy doesn’t pay the rent when your pension’s gutted.
Project 2025: The Knife Beneath the Smile
While O’Brien woos Republicans, their think tanks sharpen the blades. Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 isn’t some fringe manifesto—it’s a 900-page death warrant for labor:
- Slash overtime pay, letting bosses calculate wages over four weeks to dodge time-and-a-half 10.
- Unshackle child labor, inviting teens into “inherently dangerous jobs” with a wink 10.
- Behead public sector unions, questioning if they should exist at all 10.
- Crush organizing rights, killing card-check recognition and silencing wage talk 10.
Labor scholar Sharon Block nails it: “Working people are on their own” under this agenda 10. Yet O’Brien stuffs GOP coffers, even as J.D. Vance—hailed by O’Brien—sports a 0% AFL-CIO rating 12.
The Hall of Mirrors: “Unity” vs. Reality
O’Brien’s circus rolls on. He took the RNC stage—first Teamsters chief ever to do so—bellowing about “corporate elites” to stone-faced Republicans. One attendee reportedly yelled “right to work!” mid-speech. The rank-and-file recoiled: Vice President John Palmer blasted the move as “unconscionable.”
Then came O’Brien’s tweet endorsing Josh Hawley’s anti-“woke” rant—promptly deleted after members raged: “Scab!” and “Sean O’Brien doesn’t give a fuck about you!”
The union’s own website declares “an injury to one is an injury to all” beside rainbow flags. Tell that to LGBTQ+ Teamsters watching their president flirt with their oppressors.
The Poisoned Calculus
O’Brien justifies the gambit with internal polls: 60% of members favored Trump over Harris. But since when do leaders follow polls off a cliff? When Harris met the Teamsters board, she dodged questions on rail strikes—a fatal flaw for a Democrat.
Yet Trump, in a Musk interview, advocated firing strikers. O’Brien calls this a “both sides” failure. Nonsense. It’s moral bankruptcy wrapped in tactical cynicism.
Even Bernie Sanders—once an ally—now freezes O’Brien out.
The Reckoning
History’s pendulum swings with cruel irony.
In 1980, PATCO bet on Reagan and lost everything. Today, O’Brien throws dice with the same loaded crew.
Project 2025’s architects include 140 Trump alumni—the same cadre who’ll enforce the 10-point plan to disembowel labor. Every dollar O’Brien gives to Fitzpatrick or LaHood funds the bullet aimed at his members’ pensions.
The final insult? Teamsters’ Unity Conference in April brimmed with self-congratulation. O’Brien boasted of “tapping into rank-and-file militancy.”
Militancy? You sold it for a $5,000 donation and a photo op.
Labor’s carcass is still warm from Reagan’s massacre.
Now O’Brien invites the vultures back for seconds.
As military troops fill the streets of Los Angeles and Washington, DC, it is working class Americans that they will have in their gun sights.
When the GOP’s hammer falls, it won’t distinguish between a Republican Teamster or a Democrat. It only knows how to crush.