Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. One of these three industrial-tradition states could hold the key to the White House. This is why unions, historically linked to the Democratic Party, have also become a major player in Donald Trump’s campaign, which won a victory by securing the International Brotherhood of Truckers (Teamsters)one of the country’s leading workers’ organizations, has decided I do not support Kamala Harris to these elections.
The union, which has more than a million members from a variety of industries and not just transportation, announced Wednesday that for the first time in decades it would not ask for a vote for the Democratic nomination. It also won’t ask for one for Trump, but the move represents a powerful boost for Republicans in their fight to continue recruiting more blue-collar workers into their ranks.
“It’s a great honor. They’re not going to support the Democrats. That’s a big deal,” Trump himself celebrated a few hours after this shocking announcement at a rally near New York.
The decision to remain neutral came after the union, founded in 1904, certified through an internal survey of its members that 60% supported Trump and only 34% preferred Harris. He also held meetings where candidates courted their trustees.
“Unfortunately, none of the leading candidates have been able to make serious commitments to ensure that the interests of workers always come before big business,” said Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien.
Before, Harris had already won the support of nearly a dozen unions the most influential union in the United States, although the Teamsters’ decision is particularly demoralizing for their campaign because it is an organization deeply rooted in key general election battlegrounds: the industrial Midwest, also known as the Rust belt (Rust Belt) American.
Turn to Trump
The role of unions as major players in American political life has declined dramatically in recent decades. Today, about one in 10 workers belongs to a company, compared with one in three in 1950, according to a report from Washington University in St. Louis.
The reasons for the low penetration of unions are diverse and lie in the cultural differences between Europe and the United States, where the union movement lost steam during the Cold War. associated with socialism (in fact, May 1st is not the Labor Day holiday in the United States.) It eventually collapsed in the 1980s and 1990s, and now big business discourages the formation of new labor unions.
“At least since the New Deal, many large unions and their leaders have been firmly identified with the Democratic Party,” Jake Rosenfeld, a sociologist at the University of Washington, explained recently.
However, the complicated arithmetic of the American electoral system has meant that since 2016, with Donald Trump’s narrow victory, most of the electoral campaigns have focused on a handful of states that still retain a certain union culture derived from their past as manufacturing powers.
These are the same states that concentrate this group of voters of Democratic tradition who, after having experienced the industrial decline process They were seduced by the slogan “Making America Great Again” of the Republican leader.
“As Republicans have made inroads among non-college-educated voters, they’ve also been able to create division among union voters,” Rosenfeld adds.
One example of Trumpism’s nod to labor was the inclusion of a speech by Teamsters President Sean O’Brien at the opening night of the Republican convention, held last July in Wisconsin, one of those key industrial states.
The union leader’s appearance was odd because he avoided explicitly supporting Trump, but it was understood as a clear sign Republican Party approachtraditionally linked to large companies, towards workers’ organizations.
Four years earlier, during the 2020 election, the general assembly of this same union had unanimously approved the support of the candidacy of Harris and Joe Biden: “From his first election to the Senate until today, Biden has stood with American workers and supports their right to organize, their desire for fair wages and their need for a secure retirement.
In fact, Biden has become the first president in US history to attend a union rallywhen in 2023 he took part in a protest near Detroit organized by the United Auto Workers, the auto industry union, to demand a wage increase. “You deserve this raise,” he implored, megaphone in hand and wearing a visor with the initials UAW.
But despite Democrats’ attempts to continue to partner with these organizations, Nearly 40% of union members currently identify as Republican Party supporters.according to a study carried out by the Pew Research center in 2023 (39% of Republicans and 59% of Democrats).
However, the Teamsters’ decision was not without controversy, even within the union itself, as within minutes of the announcement, the California chapter of the organization disassociated itself from headquarters and called for an independent vote on Harris and Tim Walz’s candidacy.
But California, even though it has more population than any other state in the country, is irrelevant. There, the Democrats’ victory is predicted with a 99% probability and their delegates will not change the composition of the Electoral College that decides the president.
For Harris, it was much more important to add the Unites Auto Workers supportthe union that represents workers in the automotive, aerospace and agricultural machinery sectors, days after Biden handed over the presidential race.
Link in key states
Evidence of the influence these organisations can have on the final outcome is evident in recent surveys in key states.
According to a survey conducted by the Washington Postafter the presidential debate, Trump and Harris tied at 48% of intention among “potential voters,” while the Democrat leads by one point (48% to 47%) among already registered voters. In any case, both results were within the survey’s margin of error.
Another study, prepared by Quinnipiac and focused exclusively on the three swing states of the Midwest, confirms this tight trend: Harris is ahead of Trump by one point in Wisconsin (48% against 47%), by five points in Michigan (50% versus 45%) and is a little further away in Pennsylvania (51% versus 45%), even though the margin of error of the poll is 3%.
In 2020, Biden won Michigan and Pennsylvania by about 100,000 votes, two territories Trump narrowly won in 2016. In Wisconsin, the situation was even closer: Trump trailed Biden by 20,000 votes. So any support, even from a small local union, will be fought by both candidates until the November 5 election.
