Teamsters Won’t Endorse a Candidate for President in 2024

The leadership of the 1.3-million-member International Brotherhood of Teamsters said in a statement Wednesday it would not back a presidential candidate, a blow to Vice President Kamala Harris who has the endorsement of the country’s other powerful labor unions.

The decision by the Teamsters board, while short of an endorsement for former President Donald J. Trump, vindicated Mr. Trump’s strategy of wooing the union’s president, Sean O’Brien, a leader who has repeatedly signaled his willingness to chart his own path.

Mr. Trump invited Mr. O’Brien to his private club and residence, Mar-a-Lago, this summer and then granted him his wish for a prime-time speaking slot at the Republican National Convention in July. The Democratic convention rebuffed him.

Mr. O’Brien’s openness to Mr. Trump — who angered other unions by appointing anti-labor members to the National Labor Relations Board and praising Elon Musk recently for a willingness to fire striking workers — has badly divided the union.

The Teamsters’ National Black Caucus, more than a half-dozen Teamsters locals, and members of the union’s national leadership have endorsed Ms. Harris over Mr. O’Brien’s objections, organizing a Teamsters Against Trump effort that has undermined Mr. O’Brien two years into his first term as president. The union endorsed President Biden in 2020, as well as the Democrats Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.

On Monday, Ms. Harris held a round table with Teamsters leaders that was at times tense. Allies of Mr. O’Brien pushed her on the role President Biden played in averting a rail strike in late 2022 and the ways the White House could have been more helpful in a Teamsters dispute last summer with United Parcel Service.