West Coast Teamsters announced their endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday, just minutes after national Teamsters leadership declined to issue a presidential endorsement.
The move represents a sharp break within the powerful union’s membership in liberal states like California, where former President Donald Trump remains a widely unpopular political figure. The union’s national headquarters released internal survey results earlier in the day that showed close to 60 percent of its members backed Trump.
Teamsters Joint Councils 7 and 42 — which are made up of 39 local unions representing 300,000 members in California, Nevada, Hawaii and Guam — wrote in a statement that Harris and her running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz have a history of supporting expanded labor protections for workers, like the proposed Protect the Right to Organize Act and a Minnesota law that will ban employers from forcing workers to attend anti-labor meetings.
“Teamster members work and live in cities as well as in rural communities, come from diverse backgrounds, and have different views, but Joint Council 7 and 42 Teamsters refuse to be divided by extremist political forces or greedy corporations that want to see us fail,” said Teamsters Joint Council 7 President Peter Finn. “As Teamsters we will stand together to have a strong voice on the job, provide for our families, and serve the communities where we work.”