Union Democracy on ICE

Teamsters Local 814 Passes, Rescinds Resolution Denouncing Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Policies

Teamsters president Sean O’Brien at the RNC. (But rank and file members shouldn’t get involved in “politics.”)

Last month, members of Teamsters Local 814 in Brooklyn passed a resolution that condemned the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis and called for the abolition of ICE. This was a rare moment of public dissent from inside the 1.3 million member International Brotherhood of Teamsters against the well-publicized support for Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant policies by Sean O’Brien, the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

The moment didn’t last long. Within weeks, Local 814 called an “emergency meeting” that overturned the anti-ICE resolution on grounds that the original result was the result of improper “intimidation” to encourage a yes vote during the meeting. This explanation, which sounds a bit like the complaints of a certain United States president when a vote doesn’t go his way, is adamantly rejected by the 814 members who put forward the initial resolution. But as it stands, a small but significant expression that Teamsters don’t support the Trump agenda has been conveniently expunged from the record.

Trump’s second presidential victory in November 2024 was greeted with a wave of commentary (some of it even accurate!) about how his hard right xenophobic politics was winning over much of the American working class. After a year of inflation, Epstein cover-ups, and unpopular wars, that support has collapsed. A new poll from UMass Amherst shows that only 30 percent of working-class Americans support the government’s anti-immigrant crackdown.

As it tries to burnish its fading populist facade, the administration must be grateful for the continued support of O’Brien, who made waves when he spoke at the 2024 Republican convention. Unlike other labor officials who flirted with Trump (and who don’t represent police or paramilitary forces), O’Brien has moved further to the right over the past year, even as Trump’s popularity sinks into senile Biden territory. Last month, O’Brien endorsed Markwayne Mullin’s nomination for Homeland Security Director and attended his confirmation hearings in a show of support for his new bro buddy.

Like many Teamster presidents before him, O’Brien tries to project strength by doing a reactionary Jimmy Hoffa tough guy imitation, while shying away from holding his Republican allies accountable. O’Brien has updated this shtick for the 21st century by starting his own manosphere podcade, Better Bad Ideas. On his second episode, an interview with Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri), the IBT president said that “Social issues are all well and good, but protecting illegal immigrants that come into our country to commit crimes and steal jobs, that’s a tough pill to swallow.”

In Trump’s first year, the labor movement was divided on immigration. Service sector unions such as SEIU and CWA have been among a number of unions at the heart of the Hands Off coalition that has organized protests and immigrant rights trainings, while many more blue-collar unions were quiet. But the Minnesota murders of Good and Pretti (a unionized VA hospital nurse) have started to change that. UAW president Sean Fain condemned their murders and asserted the right to protest, and even more conservative unions representing craft workers in the building trades objected to “excessive force” No such statements came from the Teamsters national office — even as Teamsters locals in Minnesota participated in mutual aid and protests.

Is Sean O’Brien representing the views of his members? It’s hard to say. During 2024, the IBT released polls showing that its members favored Joe Biden over Trump in April, but then Trump over Kamala Harris in September. At the same time, Harris was receiving endorsements from Teamster locals and regional joint councils that represented most of the union’s members.

The resolution was put forward by a group of art handlers who have been trying to spark more rank-and-file activism in Local 814.

As is indicated by the actions of Teamsters in Minneapolis, there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that rank-and-file union members are not so different from their friends and neighbors. Colleen Donovan is a New York City UPS worker, a Local 804 member, and a part of Teamsters Mobilize, a national network of left-wing Teamsters who recently launched a “ Teamsters Against ICE “ signature campaign. Donovan has stood outside the shifts of two UPS facilities and gotten over 100 signatures each time. “Workers were quick and eager to sign,” she says.

But no Teamster local had passed a formal resolution until the March 9 vote by Local 814, a relatively small IBT local that represents professional movers, racetrack workers, and art handlers. The resolution, drawn from the Teamsters Against Ice statement, was put forward by a group of art handlers who had started organizing the previous year for the right to elect shop stewards and to get more members attending meetings and connecting with other members in the local.

Like many unions these days, Local 814 typically has poorly attended meetings-even getting a voting quorum of 25 can be a challenge-so in the weeks leading up to the meeting, these members passed out flyers outside their workplace, informing co-workers about their proposal and urging them to attend. At the meeting, there was a spirited debate about the resolution. Those who spoke against didn’t defend Trump or ICE but argued that the union shouldn’t address political issues (with apparent exceptions for when your president has to make convention speeches, start a podcast, or randomly support non-labor cabinet nominations.)

In response, pro-resolutions members, all of whom asked not to be named in this article for fear of retaliation, argued that immigration is a labor issue and Trump’s policies were aimed at dividing and weakening the working class. One member explains how he reframed the issue away from “politics”:

“The general argument is ‘we don’t need to get involved in politics.’ My thing is this is a moral issue. And I think that swayed a few people to vote with us. It puts humanity on it rather than the specter of electoral politics.”

These arguments, and the weeks of organizing beforehand, paid off when the meeting voted to approve the resolution (and make quorum) by a vote of 14–12. One of the items in the resolution called for it to be posted on the Local 814 website and for a letter to be sent to the Teamsters national headquarters in Washington, DC.

Neither happened. Instead came a call from the local for a March 21 “ Emergency meeting! “ to address a nameless “resolution brought to the floor on March 9” and “events surrounding that” which “involve EVERYmember of the union.”

At this second meeting, Local 814 President Walter Taylor said that the resolution should be rescinded because some people at the previous meeting were intimidated into voting for it. None of the members I’ve contacted agree with this characterization, or even are sure what it’s in reference to beyond the typical back and forths that happen in their meetings. They also note that Taylor never said anything about intimidation or anything improper during the March 9 meeting. Taylor and Local 814 have not replied to inquiries from The Indypendent.

As an effort to bureaucratically erase a public statement in solidarity with immigrants, the second meeting was a success. The resolution was overturned by a vote of 26–14.As a statement of allegiance to Sean O’Brien’s alliance with Trump and ICE, it was far less convincing. The meeting itself avoided discussion of immigration, the murders in Minneapolis, or any of the content of the Teamsters Against Ice resolution. Instead, Taylor and other opponents insisted that the procedure was improper.

Are there others in the Teamsters that will speak out? Teamster Mobilize has attracted attention with its Teamsters Against ICE campaign, but it is a very small group. Historically, Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) has helped rank-and-file union members fight for democracy. In fact Walter Taylor is a former member of TDU’s steering committee who first joined the group when he was a rank-and-filer working to reform the local. But while TDU has published Know Your Rights material and arguments for immigrant solidarity, it is also allied with O’Brien and has endorsed him for re-election later this year, despite his sharp right turn in national politics.

This isn’t a question of purity politics. Even as the administration has signaled at least a symbolic retreat from the most aggressive ICE tactics shown in Minneapolis, it is targeting the trucking industry as a new front in its war on immigrants. Last month, the White House stripped over 200,000 certified immigrant truck drivers of their licenses, based on the usual gross lies about the public safety threat of immigrant drivers. This ruling will throw both the economy and millions of people’s lives further into chaos; Trump is now urging Congress to pass an anti-immigrant trucking bill that would create English-only commercial license tests, among other crackdowns.

There has been no public response to these alarming developments from the Teamsters or their normally talkative president. It’s worth noting that O’Brien recently endorsed a seemingly innocuous trucking regulation bill that has become closely associated with the forces pushing the anti-immigrant legislation.

In this context, the fight over a resolution in a small New York City local is small, but significant. O’Brien’s embrace of Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda has made national headlines. Yet, there’s good reason to believe that support for this position within the union’s ranks is neither solid nor deep. And like the White House’s telegraphed plans to disrupt the midterm elections to prevent a democratic referendum on that agenda, it appears that union officials might be afraid to find out what their members think.

Danny Katch is a former member of Teamsters Local 804 which is also based in New York City.

Originally published at https://indypendent.org on April 9, 2026.