'Betrayal': Teamsters head who spoke at Trump's RNC faces challenge for 'kissing the ring'

International Brotherhood of Teamsters president Sean O'Brien is in hot water with his own members after giving a speech at the Republican National Convention this week. And it could now cost him his position.

According to In These Times labor reporter Kim Kelly, O'Brien is drawing a challenger in John Palmer, the union's VP-at-large, who tore O'Brien to shreds in an announcement of his candidacy for the union's leadership election in 2026, urging members to vote for him to "send Sean O'Brien back to the truck."

The Teamsters is one of America's largest umbrella union organizations, representing 1.3 million workers, or about 10 percent of the entire unionized labor force.

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"This administration rode into power on a wave of excitement generated by our members' desires and frustrations," wrote Palmer. "We were promised a more engaged leadership and a more militant union. What we have received so far is a PR blast furnace of misinformation and betrayal. The coalition created between TDU reformers and old guard officials has in effect bought off opposition by handing a few cushy jobs to some TDU members at the marble palace. This coalition has successfully silenced all criticism from these so-called reformers. Fear of retaliation rules the day at local unions across the country. Leaders fear trusteeships if they fall out of line. O'Brien's attacks on dissenters are well known. He has threatened and continues to threaten members of his own GEB."

Palmer further criticized O'Brien for challenging Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) to a fight in a congressional hearing, neglecting and undermining the benefits of various bargaining units, outright attacking the Machinists Union, and doing nothing as AI and automation threaten jobs of members. But his biggest grievance, by far, was the speech O'Brien gave at former President Donald Trump's convention.

"This has all culminated in his presence at the anti-union, anti-worker Republican national convention, kissing the ring of a man that scabbed a picket line, failing to pay workers, discriminating against people of color as a landlord, falsely accusing five black men in New York of murder, orchestrating an insurrection against the United States, dodging the draft, and appointing Union busters from the Jones Day law firm to create the most anti-union Labor Board in history."

O'Brien, for his part, has defended his role at the RNC by saying he was there to deliver a pro-union message to a hostile crowd, which Palmer blasts as "naive."

"We have successfully estranged ourselves from the rest of the labor movement through the actions of one man," he wrote. "Should we really go out and seek more enemies right now?"