Teamsters Memo Signals Rift Between Major Unions
Leadership of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters has formally opened the door to the union poaching members of a fellow union, setting up the possibility of an internal fight within organized labor.
Teamsters President Sean O’Brien sent a memo to the union’s officers and organizers on May 23 informing them he had nullified their “no-raid” agreement with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), according to a copy of the memo obtained by HuffPost.
No-raid agreements forbid unions from trying to organize one another’s members so that they defect to the other union. The AFL-CIO has a long-standing policy that bars raiding among its member groups, but the Teamsters are not part of the 60-union labor federation, only the IAM is.
The hard-charging O’Brien has made a name for himself tussling publicly with corporate giants like UPS and Amazon as well as Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill. He went viral last year after trading insults and nearly coming to blows with a GOP lawmaker in a Senate hearing.
The labor leader didn’t hold back from criticizing a fellow union in his memo, accusing the IAM of crossing Teamster picket lines and lobbying for legislation “that undermines our members in the trucking and delivery industries.”
“I informed the General President of the [IAM] that I was revoking any existing no-raid agreement and excluding the IAM and its local affiliates from the [Teamsters’] general ‘no-raid’ policy with respect to sister unions,” O’Brien wrote.
The rift comes at a time when organized labor writ large is trying to restore the union membership rate, which has fallen to just 6% in the U.S. private sector.
He said local Teamsters affiliates would not need permission to try to raid machinists members, but would have to notify headquarters “immediately upon the outset of any such activity.”
The IAM declined to discuss particulars about the spat. A spokesperson said in an email that the union “looks forward to discussions with the IBT and continuing to keep the focus on growing the labor movement.”
A Teamsters spokesperson said the union had nothing to add beyond what was said in the memo.
The rift comes at a time when organized labor writ large is trying to build on some high-profile victories and restore the union membership rate, which has fallen to just 6% in the U.S. private sector. Raiding can help a union grow, but it doesn’t create more union members.
The Teamsters are one of the largest unions in the country, representing 1.3 million workers, many of them in trucking and transportation. But the union has struggled to organize Amazon as the company has grown into a behemoth, reducing the Teamsters’ leverage in the logistics industry.
The IAM has nearly 600,000 members, many of them in manufacturing at companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Harley-Davidson.
Both unions have represented workers in the airline industry, and they haven’t always gotten along.
In 2013, several years after the Teamsters left the AFL-CIO, the union tried to raid bargaining units at American Airlines and then-U.S. Airways, which later merged with American. The mechanics at U.S. Airways were represented by the IAM. At the time, the IAM accused the Teamsters of “dividing already unionized employees with hollow promises.”
The Teamsters and the IAM later reached a peace. They even announced in 2022 that they would work together to organize a broad swath of workers at Delta alongside the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA. The Teamsters were to represent the airline’s mechanics, the IAM Delta’s ramp and cargo workers, and the AFA Delta’s flight attendants.
O’Brien tweeted approvingly of that joint effort last June, using the hashtags #Solidarity and #DreamTeam.
