How Big Labor and Bernie Sanders tried to steal Christmas

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In the timeless children’s book, the Grinch develops and executes a nefarious scheme to steal all of the Christmas gifts and decorations in the neighboring town of Whoville.

Much like the Grinch, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has teamed up with Teamsters President Sean O’Brien to steal Christmas right before President-elect Donald Trump returns to the Oval Office.  

It should be no surprise that O’Brien wants to cause maximum chaos ahead of Trump’s inauguration. The Teamsters spent millions of dollars during Trump’s first term on plans to bury a second term in litigation. When the Teamsters rank-and-file voted to endorse Trump for president on a 2-1 margin, O’Brien betrayed both the president-elect and his members and refused to endorse him. What’s worse, just weeks later, O’Brien enthusiastically campaigned with California Democrat Adam Schiff for Senate.

Despite O’Brien’s refusal to endorse Trump, 45% of union households voted to return Trump to the White House. O’Brien is now pretending to be a Republican because they won the election, and unions are hemorrhaging members across the board. In 1983, 20.1% of workers were unionized, compared to the 6% of private sector workers who were unionized in 2023. Jamming workers into unions is a top priority for union bosses such as O’Brien, who confiscate dues from rank-and-file members and spend them on electing Democrats.

The Teamsters are in trouble, and O’Brien has resorted to cannibalizing other unions to keep it afloat. O’Brien recently terminated a “no-raid” agreement with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, which allows O’Brien and his organizers to poach their members. O’Brien has also handcuffed the Teamsters to the Amazon Labor Union, a dysfunctional, bankrupt organization.

O’Brien has now resorted to old-fashioned, mob-like coercion, giving Amazon a made-up deadline of Dec. 15 to agree to bargain dates for a union contract, threatening a strike if the company did not meet it. Workers aren’t buying what the Teamsters are selling, but O’Brien has wasted tens of millions of Teamsters members’ dollars on his “Amazon Project” without a single certified Amazon bargaining unit — let alone a contract — to show for it. 

Of course, threatening American consumers and disrupting the operations of a major retailer ahead of Christmas runs the risk of turning the public against your cause, so painting that retailer in a bad light is critical. Enter Sanders, who rails against free enterprise while owning three homes. As chairman of the powerful Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Sanders has routinely wasted taxpayer resources attacking Amazon. In June 2023, Sanders announced a wide-ranging investigation into Amazon’s warehouses, an effort that not one of his Senate colleagues joined. 

On Dec. 15 — the exact same day as the Teamsters’s artificial deadline — Sanders released a highly misleading report designed to depict Amazon warehouses as unsafe. The report largely regurgitates claims made in an interim report based on manipulated Occupational Health and Safety Administration data that Sanders released over the summer. A look at the data shows that the United States Postal Service, which the federal government owns and operates, commits more OSHA violations than Amazon, Costco, FedEx, Target, UPS, and Walmart combined. Yet again, Sanders points the finger at the private sector to paper over government failures.

In sum, a Big Labor boss is conspiring with a senator in an attempt to disrupt the operations of a major retailer ahead of Christmas, using a politically motivated report as cover to extract unreasonable demands. If your Christmas gifts don’t make it in time, you know who to blame.

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Tom Hebert is director of competition and regulatory policy at Americans for Tax Reform and executive director of the Open Competition Center.

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