Name: Teamsters Boss Worries the Democrats Have Left Working People Behind
Uploaded: 2024-10-08T18:25:01.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Teamsters Boss Worries the Democrats Have Left Working People Behind' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-10-08. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Teamsters Boss Worries the Democrats Have Left Working People Behind' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-10-08. Transcript available.

um you know these politicians both sides democrats and republicans i'll be
honest with you i'm a
democrat but they have us over for the last 40 years and for once and not all
of them but for
once we're standing up as a union probably the only one right now saying what
the have you done
for us yeah and i'm getting attacked from the left you know and we've given
since i've been in office
two and a half years we've given the democratic machine 15.7 million dollars we've
given republicans
about 340 000 truth be told so it's like you know people say the democratic
party is the party of the
working people they're bought and paid for by big tech that big those big tech
companies yeah tech
is the new fossil fuel man right that's what i say right and you've got the
republicans who are now
saying hey we want to be the working class party right and okay you've got a
great opportunity right
now to do that and the democrats if 60 of our members aren't supporting you the
system's broken
i needed to fix it stop pointing fingers at sean o'brien stop pointing fingers
at the teamsters union
look in the mirror i mean i had a i had a heated debate with heated discussion
two weeks ago with
chuck schumer and it got ugly schumer is a piece of and it got ugly because you
know these
politicians you know the one thing i've learned they walk in and they tell you
i did this for you okay
great let me tell you what you haven't done for us or our members and we got
into it pretty heavy and
i'm like you had no problem taking 550 000 from me three weeks prior to me
going on the republican
national convention and then you want to be a tough guy on twitter or x or
whatever it is and throw
out there about me like whatever to support their can't to support the parties
about the campaign
the team the teamsters union has historically endorsed a candidate right right
a presidential candidate and
this is one of the first times two times we have in 1976 we didn't endorse in
1996 we didn't end okay so
for the first time in 30 years now that you guys haven't done it and again the
reason why we didn't
endorse him in 1996 clinton because we endorsed him in 92 and look he created
nafta and a lot of our
members over and we lost jobs as a result of it so we couldn't we couldn't
endorse and and why would he do
it though why because who are they beholden to they're not even though they say
we're beholden to
working people we're beholden to to to middle class we're beholden to american
worker they're beholden to
look all the money the money and the next opportunity right because you're not
there a long time right
and you know the next opportunity it's like what's his name uh the guy that
looks like bradley cooper
the governor of uh california newsom that guy is bought and paid for by big
tech you know he had the
opportunity to protect the general public and his constituents from ai from
autonomous vehicles from
all this that we talked about earlier and we the union union men and women
actually got him to stay
in office as a result of that recall we went out and worked hard for him and
what's he do he vetoes
all these protections against artificial intelligence against uber against lyft
all these all this
bullshit and these are the people that we were supporting right are you shitting
me seriously so
they're turning your back on you so listen i can't speak for any other unions
but i'm going to speak
for the teamsters union i represent 1.3 million members and and you know we've
said all along we took
over like we want to return on our investment we want to be like big business
we make an investment we
want to return and that return with these politicians are supporting our issues
that's going to protect
jobs and promote uh unionization throughout the whole country and you know they've
let us down they've
let us down and you know what i i'm a person i think it's probably to my own
fault my mother keeps
saying you keep fighting with all these politicians you're going to get us all
audited well that's okay
right audit i thought killed but that's how they do it first they better they
better get up early you
know can't kill the willing you know what i mean yeah dude take me through some
of the decision
and what it was like behind the scenes to make the choice not to endorse a
candidate well look the one
thing that we pride ourselves on when we took over as leaders was transparency
and inclusiveness
right so when you have 1.3 million members it's important to make certain uh
you understand their
perspective because that's that's who our employer is that's who we work for
that's who gives me the
opportunity and privilege to represent them and we went through for the first
time ever we brought every
single candidate in from the beginning and you know we invited every one of
them from dr cornell west
all the way uh donna president former president donald trump former president biden
and then vp harris
and everybody in between rfk who i love that guy i love that guy that guy's
awesome man he is
he's the best and we brought them all in a round table first time ever with
rank and file members you
know eight to ten of them from various parts of the country various political
affiliations and we asked
some specific questions that were important to us and you know at the end of
the day we did we did we
did the meetings there then we did polling uh straw polling you know in the
union halls and then we did a
electronic polling 1.3 million of our members qr code where we had over 40 000
members participate which is huge
and then we did you know scientific based polling using the democratic pollster
that the biden harris
campaign used and the only poll that uh was favorable was the poll we did the
straw poll in the union halls
which was polling 44 biden and 38 uh trump so the other polls were 60 62
percent uh republican um and so in favor of
trump in favor of trump yes even we we sent the electronic polling after um you
know president
biden dropped out of uh out of the race look biden's been biden's been great
for unions working people
um but you know the reality of it is you know he's gone he's gone he's gone and
you know again it's
it's like you know we've got to we've got to take into consideration our
members uh opinions and i
don't have the beauty of leaning one way or the other i have to represent both
democratic members and also
republican members and quite frankly uh when i spoke at the rnc that's when the
attacks started happening
from the democratic left and the republican right wait so just to back up just
so i'm clear on and so
a straw poll means it means you go to the union halls we have 319 uh union
halls nationwide okay so you
actually have an in-person meeting town hall where you get to uh where you get
to actually you know
control the meeting right you control the narrative but our members get to vote
in a secret ballot
and you know when you have meetings like that straw poll usually you can put
your thumb on the scale
and flip it either way we thought we were going to come out of there with you
know joe biden at 80
and the rest because you know they're y'all people coming in there for the most
part that show up
there you are people that work on your staff and when it only pulls 44 percent
you know something's
wrong something's broken so that's why we started doing extensive polling which
is usually the unions
are extremely democratic absolutely you're saying okay i see what you're saying
now yeah absolutely um
the teamsters polling data shows members backed biden 44 percent to trump's 36.3
percent so that's more
lopsided than usual well we we would we would hope we were thinking that it was
going to be 80 percent
uh biden because you know the people people that show up at union halls for
union meetings and and
and any type of meetings are usually your supporters are usually the people
that are going to vote or follow
your recommendations or whatever oh yeah their children dress up yeah yeah like
uh plumbers and stuff for
halloween and everything well we do check their membership cards you know yeah
yeah well some of them get in when
they're 11. yeah i'm only kidding um okay so at that point you realize okay so
things are a little bit
more there's people have different opinions there's a divide there's a there's
a divide there's a huge so
then at that point did you make the decision to not support a candidate or no
we we took all the data
and you know historically the teamsters union has never ever endorsed a
president presidential candidate
till after both respective conventions are concluded okay so we we we asked to
speak at the republican
and democratic obviously we spoke at the republican and then we didn't get
invited to the uh democratic
national convention did they get back to you did you see you asked yeah they
never they never got back
to us they never got back to us and you email them or text them oh we called
them we we we sent the
invitation we we sent the request to speak at both conventions at the same time
and we heard from the
republican national convention right away now look going in there was like it
wasn't easy it was like
you know going into uh an ex-girlfriend's house who family hates you because of
a bad breakup on
thanksgiving and saying how you all doing oh right it was it wasn't it wasn't a
comfortable failing
and um you know but like i said everybody else when we get the opportunity to
highlight american workers
and or teams you have to do it we're going to do what any and all platforms
there are whether we're
welcome or we're not and we wanted to do the same at the democratic national uh
convention we didn't get
that opportunity but you know so to get back to your point was after we did all
the scientific polling
after we uh after the conventions you know we have a general executive board
which are 24 uh leaders from all
around the country uh vice presidents and presidents or leaders yes they make
up the general executive
board so we presented all the polling data um we had you know spirited uh
debate and dialogue very
respectful um and at the end of the day um you know there were three people
that voted to endorse uh
the harris uh waltz campaign and the majority uh of the rest of the executive
board voted to uh not
endorse and allow local unions um and area joint councils to go out and uh you
know endorse whoever
they wanted and you know again you get criticized no matter what you do so uh
but it was the right
decision because you know both candidates harris and president former president
trump you know
didn't answer specific questions of what was important to us so you know like
for example so
which ones so it's like our right to strike like right now you see the ila on
strike we had the
um railroad workers when we first took over two years ago they're under what
they call railway
labor act where congress can uh make a recommendation implement the contract
under the process
and they did it and our our members weren't happy they did it under the bide
administration
and one of our biggest goals moving forward because we've got this campaign
with united airlines
where they're under the same process we want the right to strike and we can get
the right to strike
once we conclude the process but a lot of times the government will intervene
and they'll you know
obviously implement the contract so that was very important to us look if if we're
in the middle of
of an rla negotiation and we want the right to strike are you going to support
us you're going
to stop us wasn't a commitment from both sides on that on either side republicans
on either side on
that not even supporting your right to strike that's crazy that's you know that's
in certain arenas
under the railway labor act like airlines are under the railway labor act railroads
are on the railway
labor act trucking industry isn't most private sector that we represent isn't
so um you know we still
have the right to strike in other arenas but these are poor these are important
uh industries for us so we
didn't get commitments on that you know one candidate may have been stronger on
a pro act you know uh you
know obviously supporting the right to organize supporting collective
bargaining agreements we didn't
get a strong commitment from the republican side on you know vetoing vetoing
national right to work so
uh and again when you're face to face with people and you're asking questions
and look we give the
questions to all the candidates prior right so it's like prepare lie lie to us
tell us what we want to
hear right and when they can't answer the question well they try and go around
you look we're pretty
sophisticated now we're not as dumb as we look and our members are certainly
not not dumb and uh yeah
some of them are on break or whatever a lot but still yeah someone might be on
break look that's
fine brother third coffee break of the day but they earned it thank god for the
unions yeah yeah you know
but you know they um they they didn't answer the question so it's like put the
polling numbers
together put the in-person interviews you know we did the right thing we did
the right thing by our
members no matter what and i'll defend that all day long but you know the
problem is it's like the good news
about this whole situation is you see how treacherous the far left can be and
the far right and i think
it's hilarious because you know don't threaten us with a good time you want to
fight let's do it yeah
you know and you know we'll cut their money off we'll do whatever whatever it
takes they're gonna have
to earn it moving forward they've done a lot of personal attacks they've done a
lot of attacks on our
members um and and you know we're ready to go whoever wins either way you know
they're gonna have to
deal with you they're gonna have to deal with us we control commerce in this
country yeah dude and
we're powerful and we're not afraid to fight we're not we'd rather just fight
corporate america yeah
instead of dealing with this other which is a distraction you know we we've had
politicians
right that oh we support you we support you when we're doing the ups
negotiations you know there
were some high profile people that you know and senators that you know claim to
be the working people
the schumers of the world and some others we're pro-union we want to support
unions they wouldn't sign off
on a support letter for for for ups workers prior to going in these
negotiations they wouldn't sign off
of support letters you know while we're striking these dsps uh where your mom
works at amazon so it's
like what does that tell you it means you know they're afraid they're going to
get their cancer
campaign contribution taken away from amazon and big tech well don't say one
thing and do another be
consistent if you want to be in bed with big tech just tell us be transparent
like you'll always hear me say
the one thing i do and this is me probably to a fault i always state my
intentions clearly i'm
going to come after you we're going to get x y and z for our members and if you
don't you're choosing
to strike yourself so accept the consequences if you're going to screw us over
don't hide behind
false promises screw us over yeah you know tell us you're going to screw us is
there still the
possibility for you guys to endorse it no we're not going to endorse it we've
made a decision that we're
going to stay out of it um and you know see what happens nothing would change
that no nothing at all
nothing at all um look if we change our position either way you know we look
weak we're strong
right and i'm strong we're strong in our position um you know and there's
people that people that don't
agree with it um and that's fine that's great and and and the problem is is
like remember one thing
everybody's opinion matters right especially our membership and i'll tell you i'm
so disgusted
on you know the with the behavior of people like attacking each other
personally it's like
we're the we're the best country in the world which we're provided the greatest
freedoms in the world
where we can say and do whatever we want within reason not breaking the law and
not be retaliated or
retributed or any retribution against us in this whole process that's complete
opposite of what we
stand for and it's a disgrace people are laughing at us around the world

Teamsters Boss Worries the Democrats Have Left Working People Behind

um you know these politicians both sides democrats and republicans i'll be
honest with you i'm a
democrat but they have us over for the last 40 years and for once and not all
of them but for
once we're standing up as a union probably the only one right now saying what
the have you done
for us yeah and i'm getting attacked from the left you know and we've given
since i've been in office
two and a half years we've given the democratic machine 15.7 million dollars we've
given republicans
about 340 000 truth be told so it's like you know people say the democratic
party is the party of the
working people they're bought and paid for by big tech that big those big tech
companies yeah tech
is the new fossil fuel man right that's what i say right and you've got the
republicans who are now
saying hey we want to be the working class party right and okay you've got a
great opportunity right
now to do that and the democrats if 60 of our members aren't supporting you the
system's broken
i needed to fix it stop pointing fingers at sean o'brien stop pointing fingers
at the teamsters union
look in the mirror i mean i had a i had a heated debate with heated discussion
two weeks ago with
chuck schumer and it got ugly schumer is a piece of and it got ugly because you
know these
politicians you know the one thing i've learned they walk in and they tell you
i did this for you okay
great let me tell you what you haven't done for us or our members and we got
into it pretty heavy and
i'm like you had no problem taking 550 000 from me three weeks prior to me
going on the republican
national convention and then you want to be a tough guy on twitter or x or
whatever it is and throw
out there about me like whatever to support their can't to support the parties
about the campaign
the team the teamsters union has historically endorsed a candidate right right
a presidential candidate and
this is one of the first times two times we have in 1976 we didn't endorse in
1996 we didn't end okay so
for the first time in 30 years now that you guys haven't done it and again the
reason why we didn't
endorse him in 1996 clinton because we endorsed him in 92 and look he created
nafta and a lot of our
members over and we lost jobs as a result of it so we couldn't we couldn't
endorse and and why would he do
it though why because who are they beholden to they're not even though they say
we're beholden to
working people we're beholden to to to middle class we're beholden to american
worker they're beholden to
look all the money the money and the next opportunity right because you're not
there a long time right
and you know the next opportunity it's like what's his name uh the guy that
looks like bradley cooper
the governor of uh california newsom that guy is bought and paid for by big
tech you know he had the
opportunity to protect the general public and his constituents from ai from
autonomous vehicles from
all this that we talked about earlier and we the union union men and women
actually got him to stay
in office as a result of that recall we went out and worked hard for him and
what's he do he vetoes
all these protections against artificial intelligence against uber against lyft
all these all this
bullshit and these are the people that we were supporting right are you shitting
me seriously so
they're turning your back on you so listen i can't speak for any other unions
but i'm going to speak
for the teamsters union i represent 1.3 million members and and you know we've
said all along we took
over like we want to return on our investment we want to be like big business
we make an investment we
want to return and that return with these politicians are supporting our issues
that's going to protect
jobs and promote uh unionization throughout the whole country and you know they've
let us down they've
let us down and you know what i i'm a person i think it's probably to my own
fault my mother keeps
saying you keep fighting with all these politicians you're going to get us all
audited well that's okay
right audit i thought killed but that's how they do it first they better they
better get up early you
know can't kill the willing you know what i mean yeah dude take me through some
of the decision
and what it was like behind the scenes to make the choice not to endorse a
candidate well look the one
thing that we pride ourselves on when we took over as leaders was transparency
and inclusiveness
right so when you have 1.3 million members it's important to make certain uh
you understand their
perspective because that's that's who our employer is that's who we work for
that's who gives me the
opportunity and privilege to represent them and we went through for the first
time ever we brought every
single candidate in from the beginning and you know we invited every one of
them from dr cornell west
all the way uh donna president former president donald trump former president biden
and then vp harris
and everybody in between rfk who i love that guy i love that guy that guy's
awesome man he is
he's the best and we brought them all in a round table first time ever with
rank and file members you
know eight to ten of them from various parts of the country various political
affiliations and we asked
some specific questions that were important to us and you know at the end of
the day we did we did we
did the meetings there then we did polling uh straw polling you know in the
union halls and then we did a
electronic polling 1.3 million of our members qr code where we had over 40 000
members participate which is huge
and then we did you know scientific based polling using the democratic pollster
that the biden harris
campaign used and the only poll that uh was favorable was the poll we did the
straw poll in the union halls
which was polling 44 biden and 38 uh trump so the other polls were 60 62
percent uh republican um and so in favor of
trump in favor of trump yes even we we sent the electronic polling after um you
know president
biden dropped out of uh out of the race look biden's been biden's been great
for unions working people
um but you know the reality of it is you know he's gone he's gone he's gone and
you know again it's
it's like you know we've got to we've got to take into consideration our
members uh opinions and i
don't have the beauty of leaning one way or the other i have to represent both
democratic members and also
republican members and quite frankly uh when i spoke at the rnc that's when the
attacks started happening
from the democratic left and the republican right wait so just to back up just
so i'm clear on and so
a straw poll means it means you go to the union halls we have 319 uh union
halls nationwide okay so you
actually have an in-person meeting town hall where you get to uh where you get
to actually you know
control the meeting right you control the narrative but our members get to vote
in a secret ballot
and you know when you have meetings like that straw poll usually you can put
your thumb on the scale
and flip it either way we thought we were going to come out of there with you
know joe biden at 80
and the rest because you know they're y'all people coming in there for the most
part that show up
there you are people that work on your staff and when it only pulls 44 percent
you know something's
wrong something's broken so that's why we started doing extensive polling which
is usually the unions
are extremely democratic absolutely you're saying okay i see what you're saying
now yeah absolutely um
the teamsters polling data shows members backed biden 44 percent to trump's 36.3
percent so that's more
lopsided than usual well we we would we would hope we were thinking that it was
going to be 80 percent
uh biden because you know the people people that show up at union halls for
union meetings and and
and any type of meetings are usually your supporters are usually the people
that are going to vote or follow
your recommendations or whatever oh yeah their children dress up yeah yeah like
uh plumbers and stuff for
halloween and everything well we do check their membership cards you know yeah
yeah well some of them get in when
they're 11. yeah i'm only kidding um okay so at that point you realize okay so
things are a little bit
more there's people have different opinions there's a divide there's a there's
a divide there's a huge so
then at that point did you make the decision to not support a candidate or no
we we took all the data
and you know historically the teamsters union has never ever endorsed a
president presidential candidate
till after both respective conventions are concluded okay so we we we asked to
speak at the republican
and democratic obviously we spoke at the republican and then we didn't get
invited to the uh democratic
national convention did they get back to you did you see you asked yeah they
never they never got back
to us they never got back to us and you email them or text them oh we called
them we we we sent the
invitation we we sent the request to speak at both conventions at the same time
and we heard from the
republican national convention right away now look going in there was like it
wasn't easy it was like
you know going into uh an ex-girlfriend's house who family hates you because of
a bad breakup on
thanksgiving and saying how you all doing oh right it was it wasn't it wasn't a
comfortable failing
and um you know but like i said everybody else when we get the opportunity to
highlight american workers
and or teams you have to do it we're going to do what any and all platforms
there are whether we're
welcome or we're not and we wanted to do the same at the democratic national uh
convention we didn't get
that opportunity but you know so to get back to your point was after we did all
the scientific polling
after we uh after the conventions you know we have a general executive board
which are 24 uh leaders from all
around the country uh vice presidents and presidents or leaders yes they make
up the general executive
board so we presented all the polling data um we had you know spirited uh
debate and dialogue very
respectful um and at the end of the day um you know there were three people
that voted to endorse uh
the harris uh waltz campaign and the majority uh of the rest of the executive
board voted to uh not
endorse and allow local unions um and area joint councils to go out and uh you
know endorse whoever
they wanted and you know again you get criticized no matter what you do so uh
but it was the right
decision because you know both candidates harris and president former president
trump you know
didn't answer specific questions of what was important to us so you know like
for example so
which ones so it's like our right to strike like right now you see the ila on
strike we had the
um railroad workers when we first took over two years ago they're under what
they call railway
labor act where congress can uh make a recommendation implement the contract
under the process
and they did it and our our members weren't happy they did it under the bide
administration
and one of our biggest goals moving forward because we've got this campaign
with united airlines
where they're under the same process we want the right to strike and we can get
the right to strike
once we conclude the process but a lot of times the government will intervene
and they'll you know
obviously implement the contract so that was very important to us look if if we're
in the middle of
of an rla negotiation and we want the right to strike are you going to support
us you're going
to stop us wasn't a commitment from both sides on that on either side republicans
on either side on
that not even supporting your right to strike that's crazy that's you know that's
in certain arenas
under the railway labor act like airlines are under the railway labor act railroads
are on the railway
labor act trucking industry isn't most private sector that we represent isn't
so um you know we still
have the right to strike in other arenas but these ar