Teamsters Vote for Hoffa Critic Sean O’Brien as Chairman

Sean O’Brien was a rising star on the International Fellowship of Teamsters in 2017 when the union’s longtime president, James P. Hoffa, effectively pushed him aside.

But the move appears to have set fourth-generation Teamster and Boston local president Mr. O’Brien on a path to replace Mr. Hoffa as union president and one of the most powerful labor leaders in the country.

A Teamsters vice president, Mr O’Brien, who has encouraged a more assertive stance towards employers such as United Parcel Service, as well as an aggressive drive to organize workers at Amazon. declared victory He is bidding to lead a union of about 1.4 million members.

According to a tally reported late Thursday won nearly two-thirds of the votes cast in a race against Steve Vairma, the candidate backed by another vice president, Hoffa, on an election auditor’s website. He will take over the presidency in March.

The result seems to reflect disappointment with the latest UPS contract and growing dissatisfaction with Mr Hoffa, who now owns it. He chaired the union for more than two decades, and his father served from 1957 to 1971. The younger Mr. Hoffa did not seek another five-year term.

In an interview, Mr O’Brien said the Teamsters’ success in organizing Amazon workers, a stated goal, will require the union’s efforts to show fruition elsewhere.

“We have to negotiate the strongest contracts possible so we can take it to the workers at Amazon and point it out and say that’s the benefit you get from being in a union,” he said.

David Witwer, an expert on Teamsters at Pennsylvania State University in Harrisburg, said it is very rare for Teamsters to elect a president who is not incumbent or supported by the incumbent, and Mr. O. Brien was from Mr Hoffa.

Since the association’s formal founding in 1903, Dr. “There have only been two national union elections that have seen an outside reformist candidate win as president,” Witwer said in an email.

During the campaign, Mr. O’Brien, 49, opposed the union’s contract with UPS to allow the company to create a category of employees working on weekends and with lower pay, among other perceived shortcomings.

“If we’re negotiating concession contracts and we’re negotiating substandard contracts, why would any member, why would anyone want to join the Teamsters alliance?” Mr O’Brien is a candidate forum He often tied his rival to Mr Hoffa in September.

Mr O’Brien also criticized his predecessor’s approach to the Amazon, which many in the labor movement saw as an existential threat. although the union approved a decision At his recent congress, which promised to “provide all the necessary resources” to unionize Amazon workers and eventually create a department that oversees that organization, Mr O’Brien said efforts were too late.

“This plan should have been implemented 10 years ago under our warehouse director,” he said in the interview, referring to the warehouse division manager position that his rival, Mr. Vairma, has held since 2012.

In an interview, Mr. Hoffa said that when he took over, the union had disintegrated and split, leaving “financially strong and strong in every way.”

He said he was proud of his latest UPS contract, making it “the richest contract ever negotiated,” noting that it allows many full-time drivers to earn around $40 an hour.

He said Mr O’Brien’s criticism of the union’s efforts at Amazon was unfair. “Ten years ago nobody was doing this,” Mr. Hoffa said. “It’s more complicated than going out and organizing 20 people in a grocery store. It sounds so simple.”

Mr O’Brien didn’t elaborate on his own plans to organize the Amazon, saying the Teamsters wanted to get more information from their locals, but suggested they would include putting political and economic pressure on the company in cities and towns around the country. . The union has joined the effort Denying Amazon’s tax deduction in Indiana and rejecting a delivery station in Colorado.

O’Brien, who once worked as a plumber transporting heavy equipment to construction sites, was elected mayor of a major Boston local in 2006. Within a few years, he appeared to have settled into the founding wing of the union.

In an incident that resulted in a 14-day free suspension in 2013, Mr O’Brien threatened members of the Teamsters for the Democratic Union, a reform group in Rhode Island that took an ally. “They will never be our friends,” he said. the challengers said. “They should be punished”

Mr O’Brien apologized for the comments and pointed out that Matt Taibi, the reform advocate who led the struggle in Rhode Island, is now a supporter who ran on the list of candidates in the last election.

The break with Mr Hoffa came in 2017. Earlier that year, longtime Teamsters president appointed Mr. O’Brien has been placed in a position where his responsibilities include overseeing the union’s contract negotiations with UPS, where more than 300,000 Teamsters are now employed.

However, the union fired Mr. O’Brien a few months later, after he tried to recruit Mr. Hoffa’s critics into the bargaining team. Although Hoffa was seen as a distant prospect in the previous election.

“I got a tremendous response,” Mr O’Brien said in the interview. “I will not stray from my goal of getting the right people to the table.”

Mr. Hoffa said he didn’t think it would be productive for the Louisville leader to be on the team. “I didn’t want to get rid of Sean O’Brien,” she said. “Sean O’Brien was persistent.”

Two years later, Mr. O’Brien attended the Teamsters for Democratic Union meeting and discussed his support for the many initiatives long supported by the group; Half of the eligible members voted.

The union ratified the 2018 UPS contract with the two-thirds rule, despite the opposition by a majority of voting members.

Mr. Hoffa said the rule was tied, but it also served a purpose: “We’ll see how they can ratify contracts without the two-thirds rule,” he said. “It will definitely be difficult for him.”

Ken Paff, longtime Teamsters for Democratic Union leader, said Mr. O’Brien built credibility with the group by pushing for these reforms at this year’s Teamsters meeting, and many of them were accepted, including the removal of two-thirds. rule.

“TDU could never have won on our own,” Mr. Paff said. “We’ve put them forward and creamed in the past, but the O’Brien team backed them up.” That team included Teamsters leader Fred Zuckerman from Louisville, Ky., who raced against Mr. Hoffa in 2016 and will now become the union’s No. 2 official, secretary and treasurer.

Mr Vairma, the presidential candidate backed by Hoffa, also supported some reform measures, including an end to the two-thirds rule, and seemed to be trying to seize the reformist mantle at times during the campaign.

He portrayed a vote on his own list as a vote to diversify the union; its nominee for finance minister, vice president Ron Herrera, is one of the few Spanish officials to have served in the union’s highest echelons. He also tried to involve Mr O’Brien in the union’s slow approach to Amazon. “Sean, you’ve been sitting on the board of directors and I haven’t seen you do anything in the past nine years when you’ve been trying to design a proactive program with Amazon,” Mr. Vairma said in a discussion.

The two candidates agreed on several issues: that self-driving trucks pose a potential danger to the public and their members; the union should fight efforts by employers to improperly classify workers as independent contractors; Covid-19 vaccine obligations should not be implemented by employers and employers without bargaining with unions.

However, differences emerged during the sparring over the UPS contract, in which Mr. Vairma accused Mr. O’Brien of “demonizing” and his general attitudes towards employers.

Mr. Vairma warned that Mr. O’Brien was reckless, while Mr. O’Brien criticized his opponent for being overly reserved. “You’ve already admitted that you only hit six times in your 25-year career, Steve, so UPS knows you’re not going to strike,” he said.