The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership with In These Times Magazine and the Real News Network. This show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez, and we’ve got a doozy of an episode for y’all today. As always, we really appreciate, and in fact, we depend on our listeners reaching out to us with topics and stories that you guys want us to dig into. And one of the questions that you have overwhelmingly told us that you want to see addressed on the show is the question that we are dedicating today’s episode too. Now that we are one year into the second Trump administration, what the hell is going on with the teamsters and the union’s general president, Sean O’Brien?

Now, by way of introducing today’s episode, I’m going to read at length from a really thought provoking article by Hank Kennedy, which was just published in Current Affairs Magazine, and we’re going to link to this in the show notes. But Kennedy writes, “Elected as a union militant with the support of longstanding reform organization, Teamsters for a Democratic Union or TDU, Sean O’Brien has spent the last two years shepherding the lambs of the American working class straight to the slaughter via his endorsements and promotions of some of the most reactionary anti-labor politicians in the land. I was complicit in this. Back in 2021, I was a teamster working in logistics. I both voted and campaigned for O’Brien, giving money and time to his campaign. 2024 erased whatever residual affection I’d had for O’Brien. That year, he not only spoke of Donald Trump as a man, “Proven to be one tough SOB at the Republican National Convention.” He promoted as 100% on point a transphobic article by Senator Josh Hawley, this compact article on “the promise of pro- labor conservatism, a sailed corporate America for “using their profits to push diversity, equity, and inclusion, and the religion of the trans flag.” There’s been a phenomenon within the union’s leadership of working towards Trump.

Whatever Trump says, the union leadership leaps to support, often without looking. When Trump called for a 100% tariff on foreign films, a vague term given how many US productions are filmed in Canada and elsewhere, Hollywood’s teamsters went right along with it. Under O’Brien, the teamsters went on record supporting the president’s pick for Secretary of Labor, Lori Chavez Dereamer, and O’Brien himself wrote an op-ed calling her the pro- worker choice for labor in Compact Magazine. And under questioning, Dreamer admitted that she no longer supported the section of the PRO Act, weakening state anti-union right to work laws. In his podcast, guests, statements, and endorsements, O’Brien has established a deliberate pattern of behavior. Therefore, when the teamsters trumpeted their endorsement of incumbent Republican Greg Abbott in this year’s Texas gubernatorial election, it should not have been a surprise, although the reaction was swift and negative. The Teamster leadership’s embrace of far right politicians like Holly, Abbott, and Vivek Ramaswamy is not a glitch, a fluke or an accident, but part of a broad political strategy to curry favor with some of the most anti-labor politicians in the country.

And Kennedy continues. What has been gained by O’Brien’s podcast pugilism and right-wing flattery, Kennedy asks, “Not the ProAct, which remains mired in Congress and is still opposed by Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance, not a repeal of right to work laws, which Abbott continues to support after his long career railing against “big labor,” not federal help organizing Amazon, which refuses to sign a union contract with Amazon Teamsters in New York. Instead, Trump has appointed a former UPS and Amazon safety compliance officer to head OSHA despite both companies’ poor safety records. Union-busting lawyer, Crystal Carey was nominated to serve as chief counsel for the National Labor Relations Board. Federal employees have seen their unions de- certified under flimsy justifications of national security. ICE has even showed up to Teamster picket lines to intimidate strikers. Even the seemingly historic UPS contract is coming apart amidst dozens of hub closings and tens of thousands of layoffs.

All right, so we got a lot to dig into here. And to help us make sense of this, I am really grateful to be joined on the show today by two guests, both of whom are running for office as part of the fearless slate in the 2026 Teamsters elections, which are going to take place later this year in November. Our first guest is Richard Hooker Jr., Who has dedicated 26 years to the Teamsters, spending 20 of those years at UPS and the last six in leadership roles. He is the secretary, treasurer, and principal officer of Teamsters Local 623 in Philadelphia, and he is now running to unseat O’Brien as a candidate for general president of the Teamsters Union. We are also joined today by John Palmer. John has 38 years of experience in the Teamsters, and he is currently serving as a vice president at large of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

John is also running as a candidate to be the union’s general, secretary, treasurer. Gentlemen, thank you both so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it. I want to start by giving you each a chance to respond directly to our audience’s big question that I read at the top. And that question again is one year into the second Trump administration. What the hell is going on with the Teamsters Union and its general president, Sean O’Brien?

Richard Hooker Jr. :

Well, brother, Max, thank you for having us on this show. We are really appreciated. I don’t know what his thinking was. If you remember, back when he first ran, he criticized Hoffa for doing the exact same thing he’s doing now. So you have to ask yourself what makes a person say one thing and then do something totally different. It was all about getting elected. Whatever he needs to say to get elected, he’s willing to do that. But look what Trump has done to labor. So he comes to the office and he strips the TSA workers of their contract, just takes it away from him. Then he turns around and does it to another million federal workers. Wickens the NLRB, no quorum. So he’s telling you what and who he is, but we knew this already. O’Brien knew this already. He said it. When he first ran, he talked about Trump like the anti-labor person that he is.

But then when he gets in the office, he goes and takes picture with him, goes to his parties at the inauguration party, he was there and all these kinds of things. I wish I had an answer to that question about why he did it, but I think it’s just self-service. Whatever I can get, whatever I can do for myself, not the rest of the members, not the 1.3 million members that you swore to uphold and protect. He didn’t do that. And now look at us. Our members are getting shot dead in the street. They’re being deported. We are losing. The members are losing because of the decision. What are we going to do about it? That’s the question that I think people really got to start asking themselves, what are we going to do about this decision that has put not just the Teamsters in harm’s way, but all of the working class in harm’s way?

Maximillian Alvarez:

And John, I mean, you and I spoke right after O’Brien’s RNC speech leading up to the 2024 election. And you were one of the only very vocal critics in Teamsters leadership of what O’Brien was doing and saying. I’m wondering now if you feel vindicated and if that feels like a really bittersweet pill at this point.

John Palmer:

You make a good point. I’m really not looking to be vindicated. I want my union to act like it’s working on behalf of working people and not just the working people that the 1.25 million members that are paying dues to the Teamsters right now, but the broader labor movement. So I took a stance on several things about Donald Trump and you judge a book by its cover, you judge the tree by the fruit of bears. And on just about every measure, Donald Trump, Greg Abbott, Viviswami, Ramaswamy, on every measure, they fail labor massively. And even on those broader measures where we’re talking about morality, look, I don’t know how in the world the commander-in-chief can be a draft dodger. That offends me to the highest degree as having been a army, served in the army and my father did, my uncles did. We all served, we served proudly.

I volunteered to go in the army.

The other sort of moral turpitude that’s flying around right now, the whole Epstein-Files thing, it’s broader than just us as a labor movement. And I think there’s where we’re falling short right now. We have been in this sort of corporate union mentality where we run ourselves like a business and we’ve overlooked, we’ve separated ourselves from our brothers and sisters at the AFL CIO. We could argue that maybe they need some help reforming as well, and I wouldn’t deny that, but we need to be with our brothers and sisters. And this is an epic pattern, and this isn’t about the unions. This is bigger than the unions, but we can’t do it if we think we’re Teamsters versus everybody and trying to curry favor with politicians that are serial liars and can’t be trusted. We’re not going to affiliate ourselves with politicians and work our way out of this jam.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Let’s tug on that thread a little bit more because the teamsters versus everybody mentality, I’ve spoken to many rank and file members to whom that message really speaks. I get it, especially coming from places like living in Baltimore, living near Detroit. I get the sort of gritty back against the wall, it’s us against the world mentality. But it really did seem during the run up to the 2024 elections that taking a Teamsters versus everybody approach was going to be setting up a situation in which the Teamsters Union might be trying to curry some favor with a manifestly anti-labor administration, let alone an anti-human rights administration in the hopes that that administration would look favorably on the Teamsters Union and maybe do some things to repay the Teamsters and Sean O’Brien for their quote unquote loyalty there. But all of us were saying at the time that this was going to come at the expense of the entire labor movement.

It was going to come at the expense of American democracy. And so we find ourselves kind of seeing that come to fruition, but I want to try to look at this as objectively as I can. And I wanted to ask, have there been any benefits to the way O’Brien has approached the Trump administration, to the Teamsters political maneuvering, to have the Teamsters versus everybody won anything or like everybody else, are they losing as well while Trump and his oligarch buddies pillage everything that we hold dear?

Richard Hooker Jr. :

We haven’t gained anything. We haven’t gained one thing. We are in the same boat as the rest of our brothers and sisters. We have not gained one single thing from Donald Trump. The Teamsters versus everybody think, to John’s point, I don’t know why that is our moniker, but he’s shown that. Speaking at the RNC, saying Trump is a tough SOB, Teamsters versus everybody. That’s what that means. Not speaking out when he slams the NLRB, Teamsters versus everybody. Not speaking out when people in the working class gets murdered in the street, that’s the Teamsters versus everybody. Bernie Sanders asking some question about Trump’s behavior and what he did to the NRB. He has nothing to say. That’s that Teamsters versus everybody thing, but that doesn’t help anybody. Doesn’t help one working class person. So we didn’t get anything. We’re not going to get anything. So I don’t know why he’s so hell bent on supporting Donald Trump, not saying anything against him because he’s hurting everybody.

He’s hurting everybody within the working class. And I just don’t know why that a labor leader would do such a thing. Prior to getting elected, Donald Trump showed you who he was. He and Elon Musk were talking one day. Donald Trump says, “I like the way you handle striking workers. You fire them.” That’s the conversation. And you’re going to cozy up to somebody like that. As a labor leader, he should be disqualified from even having a title of being somebody who is in care of working class people. Donald Trump has done nothing to help the working class people, only the people in the Epstein class, nobody in the working class.

John Palmer:

I couldn’t agree with Richard Moore. I feel that they’ve politicized the offices. So just like every other politician, there’s handlers and advisors, and they’re being told that you need to work with both sides. I don’t disagree with that. I think that’s a great idea. But if I’m working with you and you keep hitting me in the head with a baseball bat, I’m probably going to back away from you a little bit. We need a workers’ party in this country. The system in this country is broken and Citizens United unleashed the floodgates of monies by corporations against the working class. And until we start speaking to this and we continue to try to operate the business of a union and a business model, we’re just like the oppressor. I mean, and I bring this up with the wearing of suits. There are moments when somebody should present themselves in a suit, but honestly, that doesn’t impress the members.

It doesn’t do anything for the members, and it looks like you’re trying to be like them. We need to unite people around the cause. And again, I’m going to probably say this more than once today. The working class, and Richard said it, versus the ruling class or the Epstein class, the Epstein situation is just showing people how much privilege is generated for people of money and status. The largest transfer of wealth from the working class and the poor to the richest in the world, people in the world, the richest 1% continues to market this rabid pace. And we’re talking about a stock market. If you’re fortunate enough to have some money in, a few working class people do, but the majority don’t. They’re going week to week. Our members are struggling. And again, I will go even further. You stop and look at what happened at the Mauser place you made mention of it, Max, the folks showing up on that strikeline and then ICE coming in there and pulling our people off the lines.

We have food service and people, the meat packing plants, we have tons of Teamster members and we have lots of those folks that are undocumented, but they’re paying dues to us. They’re human beings, they’re raising their families, their kids are going to school with us, and we avoid talking about these social issues. Sean O’Brien degrades people for coming here for a better life, leaving a place and willing to come here and do work we won’t do. Our kids won’t do it. So look, I think so much is wrong. We need to make a sharp turn in the right direction. And Sean spoke to a militancy. He couldn’t whiff militancy if it was right in his face. Militancy has to take place. We have to be the leaders that empower our memberships through education and action.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Let’s talk about that a little more because obviously The Teamsters is a massive storied union that represents workers in a bunch of different industries, some of which we’ve mentioned here, and many of which I’ve interviewed on this show or at the Real News Network. You got teamsters in the cannabis industry. You got teamsters in the logistics industry. You got teamsters in Hollywood, and you’ve got teamsters on the railroads, the brotherhood of locomotive engineers and trainment. And I remember speaking to a lot of folks before the election and noticing that obviously there are a lot of people within the membership who politically were in favor of Donald Trump and were planning to vote for him. But there’s so many people within the membership as well who knew how much they were going to get harmed if Donald Trump was elected president, both as human beings in the United States and as union members.

And so I appreciate that it’s a very difficult kind of tightrope to walk when you are representing the whole of your membership that is so divided on a question like this. But I wanted to ask if you could keep unpacking a bit more for our listeners who the Teamsters are and how members are being impacted under this current administration from Amazon to Hollywood. I know there’s no one answer there. Some people are getting hit by tariffs and other people are having ICE show up to their damn picket lines. But if you could just talk to folks listening to this who, again, don’t know a whole lot about the internal workings of the Teamsters and all the different types of workers you represent, I just wanted to ask if you could say a bit more about how your membership is doing and how folks are faring now that we’re a year and some change into the second administration.

Richard Hooker Jr. :

Our members are struggling. They’re having a hard time. Kitchen table issues, how am I going to pay the rent? How am I going to pay the mortgage? A lot of our members are being laid off, buildings are closing, losing their healthcare, things like this. We’re not fair and well at all. These situations are very, very frustrating to our members. When we go out and talk to them at different locations in different states, everybody has the same issue. Why are we going through what we are going through? We are supposed to be the leaders in this moment, but we’re not leading right now. To your point, the Teamsters have a very storied history. When you say that word Teamster, it used to mean something. It used to command respect and somewhat fear. That’s no longer the case now. We are the laughing stock of the labor movement.

If you talk to other labor leaders privately, they’ll tell you, we don’t know what’s going on over there. We don’t know how a labor organization would put their members through a situation like this. Why not stand up with the rest of us? What happened to solidarity? What happened to it? And so our members are hurting. They’re frustrated. They’re going through a lot of situations that we didn’t need to go through right now. Leadership is supposed to, be honest, it’s supposed to be upfront and it’s supposed to be accountable. What has happened with our leadership not standing up to Donald Trump and telling him, “We will not support you. We will not endorse you. ” This whole tacit endorsement, because that’s what it was, even though they’re going to tell you, “Oh, we didn’t endorse anybody.” You did. You did. Stop hiding behind it. You did because of fear of your membership, but that’s what they elected us to do.

Stand in front of them and tell them, “Your pension is on the ballot. Your healthcare is on the ballot. Your worker protections are on the ballot. The ruling class, Epstein class, Donald Trump class does not want you to have a collective bargaining agreement.” He showed you that when you first came in. He took working people’s collective bargaining group away from them. What should have happened? The general president should have been a man stood in front of the members. This is what we’re not going to do. Understand that you may have some proclivities and you may be upset that Kamala is a woman and whatever the case may be, but we are not going to stand with somebody who does not want you to have a pension. We are not going to support somebody who does not want you to have a contract. We are not going to support somebody who say you should be fired for going on strike.

We will never do that. That should have been the message, but it was not. And because it wasn’t, look what’s going on. Not just to the Teamsters, but to the entire working class. That’s what’s going on right now with the Teamsters members.

John Palmer:

Absolutely. I mean, Richard, there’s a reason I’m running with you, brother. Those comments are spot on. I think at the heart of this is what happens with organizations in general. When the top tier of your organization is getting, in some cases, four salaries or three salaries, even two salaries. And they claim, well, if you did two jobs, you’d want to get paid for two jobs. Well, most of the Americans are working two jobs and not getting paid what one is worth. So once you live that life and you donwn that suit and that tie, you’ve lost where you’re at. Here’s the thing about telling the truth. I would love to get reelected for another term, but I am not going to sell the souls, not my soul necessarily, but the souls of working men and women across the country and in this entire world for another term.

And if you’re more interested in PR, spending over a million dollars on PR to sell contracts and yourself in a glossy magazine, you’ve forgot what this movement’s all about. And we’re at a moment again that folks better realize, I hate to be a doomsayer, but the writing’s on the wall. People are losing their freedom. AI, they’re spending more money on AI right now than it may ever pay them in the future. I mean, the cost to our environment, the water costs, the grid inequity, we should be putting our money in those things. Instead, we’re putting our money in a faulty set of intelligence and automation that’s going to displace people. And at some point, when you put everybody out of work, who’s going to buy your stuff? I mean, if you’re a capitalist, you need to sell your product. And I’m not anti-capitalism, but I think we’ve allowed it to run amuck in this country because if only 1% of the population owns the majority of the wealth, something ain’t right, man.

If you’re complaining that a guy’s getting paid 50 an hour, you’re not getting paid enough.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I want to hook this back into the question of political strategy because I think you both really forcefully articulated something that we’ve stressed for years on this show, which is that the labor movement in general is supposed to represent the interest of the working class, not the interests of a political party. I mean, it is the independent forum for working people to come together, organize, and assert our needs as working people and put them on the ledger of priorities from Washington DC on down. And I know that in what Sean O’Brien said on the RNC stage a couple years ago, that a lot of people did resonate with the words that were coming out of his mouth when he said, “We’re not going to endorse Harris, but we’re also not going to endorse Trump.” But as Richard said, that was very much understood to everybody as a tacit endorsement of Trump.

His words on paper, that sounds good, but as we’ve talked about, in reality, that is not how it’s shaken out. And that makes it all the more befuddling to look at the teamsters endorsing very anti-labor Governor Greg Abbott in Texas for his gubernatorial reelection campaign. And John, you’re in Texas. I’m wondering, can you help me make some sense of this? Is there something I’m not seeing?

John Palmer:

Well, I am from Texas, and I can remember when Democrats owned this state when I was younger, and again, I’m not endorsing one party over the other, but when you have a party, I mean, Texas is definitely MAGA wild, and I don’t know that that’s a party. I think there’s a lot to unmask there, and I think the most intelligent folks know what I’m talking about. It’s 90 degrees today. It’s one of the hottest states in the country. Greg Abbott fought legislation that would allow people that work on the highway to have water. We have, every year now, UPS drivers dying inside of their trucks. He’s staunchly right to work. Now, there’s two joint councils in Texas. Our union density’s about 5%, and not a single Teamster that I’m aware of was pulled on this. This was the same nonsense that went on with Vivic Ramaswamy.

I went to Austin the other day, and Waymo’s are running all over there. Now I’m finding out 10 cities in Texas are going to have these Waymos running everywhere. We already have driverless trucks running up and down the highway, not en masse yet, but we’re not going to curry favor with Greg Abbott. I would love to drag the Republican Party to the center of the aisle. And as much as many, I guess, folks with the more conservative viewpoints would like to drag the leftist Democrats, but that MAGA group, they are out there, buddy. They’re not the majority. And I think our leadership believed it was all about staying elected. Let’s just put that out again. They believed that they could curry some small favor with these JD Vance, Holly, Abbott, Ramaswamy, all these folks they keep endorsing. And Donald Trump, of all people, seriously, this man has never lived up to a single prominence in his life.

So you quoted it properly, or I may have said it, it’s a fool’s folly. You think that you’re going to … First of all, it’s selfish to think that you could curry favor and it’s like grabbing all the food, a large family with a small meal, and you’re going to eat all the food. What’s wrong with you?

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and since we have mentioned it a number of times, and Richard, you worked many years at UPS. I wanted to also bring that back in here because listeners of this show, people who watch the Real News Network, they were all in on the UPS campaign. They were super invested did in the O’Brien slate running for election, ousting the Hoffa administration. I mean, folks I think had a lot of really high hopes for O’Brien and for the teamsters in this new labor moment that we had been living in the past half decade or so. And a lot of that centered on the fight at UPS and what was won in that contract campaign and what it meant to the union to make advances where for so many years it felt like they were backsliding. And yet here we are just years later seeing massive job losses, more automation, more people dying of heat in their cars.

So I wanted to ask, using UPS as an example, what can we learn from that about what the union did right and UPS has done wrong, but also for disaffected members who were hopeful in that moment, what would you say to them about the fight moving forward at UPS and beyond?

Richard Hooker Jr. :

So I’ve been at UPS for 20 years prior to taking office. I’ve done every job you can think of there. I think what happened with members really gravitating to O’Brien, especially around this contract campaign was that Hafa sold us out quite a bit of times during his UPS contract negotiations. And when you hear somebody come up and say stuff like, “We’re going to bring UPS to their knees,” that resonates with those members because for everybody that works at UPS, you know how hostile UPS is as a company. They harass you, they intimidate you, they retaliate for you standing up. So when you hear your leaders say, “Hey, it’s going to be our time to really put them on defense and to put them on their needs, you’re going to gravitate to that. ” And then all of this, this PR, “Hey, we did this. Hey, we did that and we’ve got this and we’ve got that.

” And then you throw the money out in front of it, people gravitate to that because now they feel as though, you know what? We’ve been beat down for so long for many, many decades. We were sold out. We voted down the contract last time. They shoved it on us. Now it’s our time. We got it. And then you get it and then there is a lot of things that wasn’t talked about. It kind of glossed over. We got you this big, big, big wage increase, $7.50 over five years, the largest we ever gotten. But guess what? You may never see it because of no protections of automation and AI. They still get to do whatever they want to do with the subcontracting. And now Rodi is taking our work. So now I got all this big increase, but instead of working, especially as a part-timer, instead of working 25 hours a week, now I’m working 12 hours a week.

So yeah, I got a big increase, but I’m working half the amount of hours, so I’m not even getting what I used to get. And oh, by the way, my building is closed, so now I may have to travel an hour away to get to work. So now I’m spending more gas to get back and forth to work. And maybe I may be on the cusp, but not being able to work at all, so now I don’t even have healthcare or a paycheck.

And then you keep hearing this bluster about how we won, we won, we won. But to those people who are laid off and not working and don’t have any healthcare, and you said you stopped it and you were going to bring them to their knees, how did we win? What are we doing to those members? What is the cry and the fight? Why didn’t we take them to court? We sued them over this buyout. Why we didn’t sue them over the fact that all these folks are losing their jobs? Where is the cry? So I think moving forward, in order to win, not just against UPS, Amazon and other large companies, we’re going to have to organize our members better. We got to be truthful. We got to be honest. Hey, listen, this is what our plans are. This is what we plan to do.

Now, in order for this to work, I need you guys to help us out. We got to train our members on how to fight. Rah, rah, rah, sit, boom, boo sounds good, but right now we don’t want a helmet and chinstrap speech. I want to know what are we going to do because right now I don’t have work. I’m not working the hours. I’m traveling an hour and a half to get the work. What are we doing about it? The helmet and the chin strap is not going to work right now. But we have leadership who doesn’t have that relationship with the members. They don’t have that day-to-day. They don’t see him. They don’t experience the same thing that we experience. I think he makes, and I’m not clouding anybody how much money they make. Yo work, you get paid. But when you make almost half a million dollars in compensation and then you got members who have lost their healthcare and don’t know how they’re going to put food on the table, there is no relatability there.

We don’t relate on anything, especially if you don’t come from that craft. So I think what we are going to have to do is really start to organize our members around what it looks like, how to fight. If you want certain demands met, we going to have to get in the mud together. Together is how we win. Tough speeches are not going to work. They didn’t work when Hoffa was doing it. And you see what’s happening now. It’s not working. Members need the truth. They need honesty. That’s what they need right now. Hooker, how are we going to win? This is how we win. Listen, what are you doing in your local? Are you following the grievances? Are you being empowered on how to file grievances? Are you saving money for a potential strike next time? What are we doing? What is the plan? We need to start talking about that right now.

Are we getting committees together right now for the articles in the contract that’s going to deeply impact our members? Automation and AI. Listen, the ball was dropped in 2023. What are we going to do about it right now? Are we going to train our members on automation? Are we going to upskill them and not de- skill them? What are we going to do? Those questions need to be answered. There has to be a plan around those things and we have to produce that plan so people can get behind because you can’t practice picket this. You can’t practice picket this. People don’t have healthcare because they don’t have one punch a week at UPS. There’s no practice picket. Where is the signs at now? People are angry. They can’t take care of their families. They talk about these things at the kitchen table and we have no answer for them.

I’m losing my job. Roadie. Sure. Post is going back to the post office. What are we doing about it? Tough speeches are not working anymore. People need answers.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, let’s take this discussion to the November elections that are coming up and how the fearless slate of which you two are the ticket leaders for, how that slate is attempting to answer those questions. So let’s talk a bit more about this slate, how it has come together because I think a lot of folks who have listened to this show, again, they thought Teamsters for Democratic Union, isn’t that the kind of reform group that they push for O’Brien? Isn’t that the place that I should support? But they’ve also been hearing a lot of criticisms of TDU of late and seeing the shifts in TDU, banning people from their conference and suppressing internal dissent and all that stuff. So now we have this new slate, the fearless slate. So can you tell us more about what that slate is, who’s on it, what the message is and how you guys are together trying to address those major questions that you just outlined, Richard?

John Palmer:

So I’d like to address a couple of things you threw out. So number one, make no mistake, and the old adage about giving the devil is due. Sean O’Brien’s a political opportunist. And if you look about it at how his sort of situation evolved, he saw what happened when Teamsters United won six spots on the slate with Hoffa. And he saw that, and really Canada didn’t win it, but the last batch of ballots counted flipped the election back to Hoffa. So he saw that momentum. And to its credit, he started cozy enough to Fred Zuckerman. And Fred decided to, without talking to TDU who had really sponsored and backed every reform slate until now. I mean, it’s going all the way back to the beginning of the consent decree.

So he basically stole the movement, announced it without asking anybody. And I want to say something about the TDU members. Those folks are my friends. I have no discourse or angst against any TDU member in particular, none. I think they’re all there for the right reasons, but I will be frank about this. The organization has been co-opted and would not allow my brother, Richard Hooker, to speak at their convention, would not allow me to rejoin because they knew I was going to speak out. I think that’s what you get elected to do. You get elected to speak out about the issues. And sometimes people don’t like what you got to say. That’s okay. I’m one voice. But Sean captured all this. Everything’s about timing. Barack Obamas, when he got elected, people said, oh, he’s too young. No, he had the right space at the right time.

Sean O’Brien’s done this. Him and his advisors, to their credit, disarmed TDU, they bought him off for pennies, man. I mean, if you’re going to sell yourself, at least get paid. At least get paid. So they bottom off for pennies. The morals sort of principled values that they have always fought for, suddenly they’re defending the decision with Clacy Griswold. Not Clacy, but his brother, Griswold.

O’Brien can do nothing wrong. They’re defending it. And now there’s no real … I mean, that’s the reason we’re here. Richard and I talked about this almost immediately after Sean was elected. It was obvious to me that I’d made a really great mistake by hitching my wagon to this slate and that they were no different than what had preceded us. They had sold our members of Bill of Goods. And to Richard’s earlier point, our challenge now is not to attack TDU, not to attack O’Brien and Zuckerman. I mean, look, they are what they are. Everybody’s experienced it. So let’s talk about what we’re going to do different. And they talked about a militant union. Again, to Richard’s point, the only way you become militant is to convince your members. The leadership of the labor movement, if you go back in time, and I’m not trying to pat myself on the back, don’t get me wrong, but organizers rose to the top, and there was a reason for that.

A lot of the folks that run these locals are businessmen. They’re running a local, they’re managing the finances, they’re going to the committees, they’re going to the meetings, but organizers know that if you’re going to organize a worker, you got to move them to action. And Richard’s right, if we do not move our members to action and quit trying to play inside this corporate model of unionism, we’re all going to pay the price. And unions are that one sort of barrier to the working class completely evaporating and it’s wealth and value.

Richard Hooker Jr. :

Yeah. Unions are the vanguard of the working class. If you look at our slate and how it’s constructed, heavy, heavy emphasis on rank and file members, because the rank and file, that’s where our power is at. If you look at people like we have in the South, we have Brother Leonard Steer, we have Sister Yvette, two ranking file members. You look at Brother Jeff Shinfield, also rank and file. I think myself, Mike Moxley and Jeff and Chris Livera and John Palmer, we are the only officers on the ticket. And this was done on a purpose for a purpose. Ranking file power is how we going to turn this organization around. If we don’t put emphasis on our rank and file, reinvest in our rank and file, we are going to keep having these conversations and nothing’s ever going to get done. The reason why our employers continue to win is because, and I’m throwing myself in there, we have not done the job of organizing our members to action.

Only around contract time, only when we want to get elected is when you see this big action. “Oh, we got to vote. We got to do this. “What happens when the employer violates the contract repeatedly? What are we doing about it? And I’m not talking about just filing the grievance. That’s easy. Yeah, we’re going to win the grievance. We’re going to get you paid whatever the adjudication is, but how are we organizing our members and mobilizing them around these issues that keep happening? What job actions are we doing? What are we doing to fight the smaller battles? So when the big battles come, it’s not such a push or a pull. One of the things that we’re going to be focused on is renewing the trust the rank and file has without members. Because again, you can’t be a corruptible organization and then think people are going to want to organize with you or want to fight.

To Brother John’s point, man, we got people on that slate embezzling money and all these other kinds of things. Members are not going to want to move. Why am I going to move when you’re going on Trust to Paris and all this other kind of stuff? Well, I can’t even get you to help me out and take care of this grievance. We have to do a better job of really understanding what our members are going through. This is not like the ’50s and the ’60s, man, things are happening in our members’ lives. They can’t afford life right now. What are we doing to make things easier? How are we showing up outside of just what the employee is doing? What are we doing in your community? What are we doing at your place of worship? What are we doing at your kids’ school? How are we showing up for you outside of work?

And once we start to build that family, again, the way it used to be way back in the day when we had real power, we’re not going to organize Amazon. We’re not going to win at UPS. We’re not going to do any of those things until we put the members in the forefront, give them their union back, let them have the power, not let them show them, empower them, give them the power so they can fight back. Because this is not Hooker versus O’Brien. This is every rank and foul member on what they want from their union. What do you want your union to be? Do you want it to be about PR or do you want to win? Do you want it to be about retaliation or do you want to win? Do you want it to be about harassment or do you want to win?

Do you want it to be about intimidation and corruption or do you want to win? That’s what this is about. Do you want your union to win? This is not about Hooker, O’Brien, Palmer, Zuckerman. This is about the rank and foul members and what they want from their union. We talk to them. We know what they want. We just need the opportunity.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and on that note, I wanted to ask in a practical sense, if you have Teamsters members who are listening to this and even folks who aren’t members of the Teamsters, but who are going to be really interested in this election, what are the things that they need to know about the election process, anything that they can do to learn more about this slate? And what is it going to take to win this thing?

John Palmer:

So the process is, in some ways, very similar to our national elections. Every five years, we have a constitutional convention where the Constitution can be amended, and then delegates vote on who gets on the ballot. There’s a minimum requirement of 5% of the delegates in order to get on the ballot. And that varies from region to the nation. So if you’re in the nation, it’s a bigger number, but it’s more people voting a larger area. The delegates, because of the consent decree and TDU, they changed it to where the constitution used to state that by virtue of their office, all the officeholders went to the convention. The local leaders, they were delegates. So that’s where you wound up with Jackie Presser being carried around like he was a king in Egypt or something. But from that, the reform came and people were allowed to run for delegate.

And that’s how we’ve managed to have a reform slate in every election. And it’s really, really important that that continues. So we got people running for delegate. When we get to the convention, those delegates, unlike what’s being told to many people, those delegates will vote in a private area. They will be set a pin on their phones. They’ll be able to go behind a little booth, just like we all do when we go vote, and they’ll be able to vote for the delegates they want to support. The real thing here is the 5% threshold. If we get there, every convention, the incumbents had an overwhelming number of delegates. That never lines up with the membership, which should tell you something about our Constitution and how it works.

Our process isn’t Democratic enough. So they’ve probably raised a million dollars, I don’t know, maybe $30,000 we’ve raised. It’s out there for public consumption. It’s not about the money, it’s about talking to the members and solving the problems. So everybody’s going to get, every dues paying member will get them a ballot in the mail. They’ll be mailed out in October, and then the ballots will counted in November, probably in the Maryland, DC area. But members need to think about the change that they voted for and the change they want to see. And I want to reinforce there’s going to be a large attack on this slate for being so rank and file.

We need that more than ever. Ron Carey had rank and file people on his late, and some of them were great vice presidents. It’s been a long time since we’ve experienced … And Ron Gary, don’t get me wrong, I’ve worked for Ron Carey. He wasn’t perfect, but he was certainly the best general president of my lifetime. None of us are perfect. I’m not perfect. I fall short of the glory. But it is really, really important that people vote and people understand the issues. For us, it’s going to be more of an uphill battle because we’re not going to be able to put garbage in their mailbox and attacking us. We want to run on what we want to do and not what they are. I mean, if a subject comes up about what they’ve done, we’ll speak to it, but we’re here to be … People like thinking that the future’s bright, so we’re here to paint a brighter future, but we can’t do it without our members.

And that’s where we failed for the last … My entire time as a Teamster. Carrie tried it. He got it. The UPS Stripe is a great example of mobilizing the members. They got it done. They got America behind them. America still loves the working, man, because that’s who we are working women as well.

Richard Hooker Jr. :

And I just want to say too, the importance of knowing that you’re going to vote privately, your vote is sacred and is also secret. So you don’t have to worry about people looking over your shoulder, pressuring you to do something that you know is unethical. I think this organization has to have an election, especially when you have the system now where it’s really autocratic and dictatorial. This organization believes in democracy. I believe that we have some true trade union people that are teamsters who know that what’s going on is not right. And I know they believe in their heart that there’s a better option, and we’re speaking to the issues and the problems that they are facing every day. And so what we need people to do is when they get in their booth, just vote your conscience. Vote your conscience. If you believe in democracy, vote for it.

Because right now with this retaliatory and behavior this guy has and retaliation, and it’s well documented. We’re not making this up. We’re not making this up. These folks do not want to have an election because they know if we get on the ballot, they are in some serious trouble. They know it. The Trump Epstein class, his flirtation with them, taking pictures with Christie Nome, the disaster at UPS, just look what’s happening. They know he is in some serious trouble and they do not want us on the ballot, but we are going to give them that ballot because I believe in every teamster, they have a belief in democracy and they wanted to keep it alive. So don’t worry about getting pressured about, all man. If you vote a certain way they’re going to come after you, nobody’s going to know how you vote. Nobody’s going to know.

John Palmer:

Yeah, I want to reinforce that real quick because there’s been a long history of, and I said I wouldn’t talk much about them, but the slate is called fearless for one reason. The amount of intimidation and pressure exerted upon officials in this union is incredible. I’ve experienced it from day one when I ran with this guy and literally just got a decision from the labor board that found merit in my charges that he attempted to fire me along with my principal officer of my local in San Antonio, Texas. He’s done this. He does it to members. He’s been suspended for doing this. And a union is almost like a church, in my opinion. I mean, I hold it dear to my heart. We’re here to serve people. We’re here to take care of people. And your political ambitions, if you’ll just do those two things, you don’t need to do all these other things, but no one should … I mean, the money, the million dollars they’ve raised, that’s because the locals are scared if they don’t give them the money, they’re going to get trusteed.

So this whole thing of fear in our system has to go away. People have to be heard. And you know what? Speak in your mind is not a bad thing. We don’t have to agree. At the end of the day, majority rules, but let somebody speak their mind. Hear them out. Don’t come after

Maximillian Alvarez:

Them. So it’s almost like you’ll leave a better legacy if you focus on helping people rather than running a podcast and repressing anyone who speaks out in criticism of you. But what the hell do I know? So I want to both circle back to where we started and ending on the kind of note that you both have given us. John, you said something really powerful that people want to believe in a brighter tomorrow. And let’s be honest, we don’t live in times where the most of us are feeling that way. These are really, really dark days. And I think that one of the biggest changes that I myself notice as a millennial, as a child of the ’90s, is that I grew up being excited about the future. I no longer live in a world where the people I know or myself feel that way.

That is a huge shift in just half a lifetime. And people need to believe that there’s still something worth fighting for, and there’s everything worth fighting for. The world is not cooked yet, but it will be if we don’t do anything. And that is going to take working people across sectors, across races, across industries, across borders, across union and non-union, realizing that we have way more in common with each other than we do with the Epstein and ruling class that is destroying our planet and our lives so that they can amass billions and billions of dollars in untold riches and power and influence and all that stuff. And so I wanted to take that into a final kind of reflective question here, looking at the positive vision of what this slate represents, what working people can invest in as a fight that we can win.

And I wanted to ask you guys, looking forward for the Teamsters, why it’s so important for, say, example, that your slate is calling for the Teamsters to rejoin the AFL- CIO. And Richard, you said earlier in this interview, the Teamsters have to do more than just focus on the shop floor stuff in our contract. We got to be out there in our communities and building a better world and uniting with other unions and other working people to be that force for good. So I wanted to end there. Could we talk about the AFL- CIO reaffiliation question, but also moving beyond that, what is the positive direction that you see the teamsters and the labor movement needing to go in and for people to believe in?

Richard Hooker Jr. :

So I have this belief that if you organize workers where they live in their community, it’s a lot easier for them to join a union or organize themselves within the community as well against issues that may impact that community where they live. And so that’s why in my local, we do a lot of things in the community where it’s marching for gun violence, where it’s giving members food who can’t afford food, home assistance. We have a lot of members who go through some trying times, and we want them to be able to reach out to their union for help because that’s where the disconnect comes sometimes too, is because they’ll go to the employer for assistance and that breaks that relationship away from the union. And we don’t want that because it’s easier for our members, if we need them to, to fight against their employer if they understand that we have their back not just on the shop floor.

You know what? I’m going to stand with the union because when I needed something to eat, I went to a union hall, picked up some diapers, picked up some clothes, picked up what I needed from my family, so I’m going to stay with my union. My union wants me to come to this job action. It may not have nothing to do with me specifically or my classification, but you know what? We went out to a depart, we had a softball tournament that funded the scholarship for my kids going to college. I’m going to go out to this job action. Whatever we can do outside of the grievance procedure or negotiations or arbitration, the more we do outside of that, the stronger Here, we will be. Again, that’s what organizing is. Take what your members like and are interested in and formulate a plan on how we can do that together.

So when it comes time to fight, you’re not doing a whole lot of pushing and pulling. That’s what we do here. We feed them, get them out of abusive relationships. We have members who are in relationships where they’re getting abused. No, no, no. Reach out to us. We can help you find a safe place, a safe space where it’s not going to cost you anything till you get on your feet and then we will be there to help you out. That’s what a union is supposed to do. When we go down and our members are going through a rough time, we’re there. It’s not just about fighting the employer. The more we do that, the better we are. Getting back with the AFL CIO is a must. It has to be. And I told Liz Schuler, I ran into her down here in Philadelphia at the 30th Street Station.

I was going somewhere to campaign. She ain’t know who I was, but I knew her from running to her before. And I told her, I said, “If we are successful at getting this done, one of the first things we’re going to do is reaffiliate because it’s important that we get rid of this Teamsters versus everybody moniker and say it’s Teamsters versus the Epstein ruling class.” That’s what the shirt should say. That’s what it should say. But we need our brothers and sisters from the SEIU, IBEW. You name it, that’s the Painters Union. I mean, everybody. Everybody has to be moving in the same direction. We’re not going to win this alone. And you see it. You see it. Everybody has to be moving in the same direction. Weaponizing our solidarity, that’s what we’re going to have to do. Getting back with the AFL is one of those things that we have to do because we’re better together.

We’re stronger together. We impact more together for our members and for the larger working class. So that’s what we’re going to have to do. That’s what we will do. We just need the opportunity. That’s all we need. That’s all we need.

John Palmer:

So as an organizer, I mean, I think Richard summed up the really key points. I think I want to finish with the idea. As an organizer, I’ve watched groups grow from a very, very fearing group of people to a group that’s willing to march in on the boss, demand recognition, that’s willing to do things that shocked the employer. And even seen it where the employer would actually sit down with our committees before the election because they knew who was running the place. We were running the building and that’s what we have to do collectively. Now, that journey from being skeptical and worried about getting fired to taking on the employer starts with the trust between the organizer and the potential member. And back to Richard’s initial statement, we need to organize our membership. That doesn’t mean sending out flyers, sending out. That means our education department being involved with our local unions and literally telling people, “Look, whatever your political issues are, here’s how these folks vote.

And we should support this person because they’re going to take care of your family.” But at the end of the day, who’s going to take care of your family is when we all stand together. And I’ll finish by saying, grew up in the military, served in the military. Those of you both live in very, very diverse cities. Growing up with diversity is a beautiful thing because not everybody goes to church. They might go to a mosque. There’s many, many different ways they may not believe in God. And obviously they speak different languages and we look different. But at the end of the day, we’re all going to achieve the same end. And we can’t win that end until we unify everybody and build that trust.

Richard Hooker Jr. :

So if anybody wants to find out more about our slate, you can go to our website, B-frearless.org, that’s B-E-fearless.org. If you want to donate, make sure you are a Teamster because we can’t accept any donations unless you’re a Teamster, no employer donations. We do need donations and we need your support. There’s a lot of traveling that we are going to be doing, and we want to get to as many people as we possibly can. The main thing is talk to your coworkers, your brothers and sisters. Let them know that there is a better option of leadership and they will have a chance to put that on the ballot this summer and later on this fall. It’s your right. It’s your responsibility to vote. It’s your responsibility to have leadership that looks like you, that wants the best for you, and that is you. Because this feeling slate is you and we need you.

So please visit us the website, befeolless.org. Talk to your coworkers, and we look forward to seeing you real, real soon.

Maximillian Alvarez:

All right, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us today. I want to thank our guests, Richard Hooker Jr. And John Palmer, veteran members and leaders from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters who are both running for office in this year’s union elections as part of the fearless slate. Follow the links that we provided in the show notes to learn more. And of course, I want to thank you all for listening and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see y’all back here next time for another episode of Working People. And in the meantime, go explore all the great work that we’re doing at the Real News Network across our YouTube channel, our different podcast feeds, our website, and our social media pages. And help us do more work like this by going to the realnews.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you guys, it really makes a difference.

I’m Maximillian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever.