The International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), commonly shortened to Teamsters, is one of the nation’s largest private-sector labor unions. Principally representing employees in the trucking, railway, and airline industries, the Teamsters union has more than 1.2 million members. ¹ It is not affiliated with the AFL-CIO. ²

The Teamsters union was synonymous for decades with its longtime president James R. “Jimmy” Hoffa, whose ties to organized crime are widely suspected to have led to his disappearance in 1975. ³ The Teamsters’ history of corruption and pervasive involvement with organized crime was famously dubbed a “Devil’s pact” by then-U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani in a 1989 federal racketeering indictment against the union and its leadership. ⁴ Hours before the trial on those charges was about to begin, the Teamsters and U.S. Justice Department reached a consent decree that forced reforms to the union’s leadership selection process and placed the Teamsters under government oversight for 25 years, with the final remnants of that oversight ending in 2020. ^{5 6}

A succession of Teamsters presidents and other key executives during the 20^th century ended up convicted of or plausibly tied to corruption. ⁷ Teamsters presidents Dave Beck, Jimmy Hoffa, Roy Williams, Jackie Presser, Weldon Mathis, William McCarthy, and Ron Carey all faced indictments or convictions for corruption or other significant criminal charges. ^{7 8}

The Teamsters’ pension plans were long known as the “mob’s bank” for their pervasive ties to organized crime, including the role they played in funding mob-controlled projects such as Las Vegas casinos. ⁹ In the 2020s, decades of pension fund mismanagement and corruption came due as some of the largest funds defaulted and were unable to make promised payments to retirees. ¹⁰ This resulted in the largest bailout of a private pension plan in American history, when Teamsters pension funds accounted for more than half of the $69 billion in federal pension plan bailouts created by the Biden administration-backed American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. ^{11 12}

The Teamsters have long been more politically independent than other, more reliably pro-Democratic Party labor unions, with their endorsements and partnerships influenced heavily by their efforts to influence federal investigations into and oversight over their leadership and operations. ¹³ Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy’s “blood feud” with Jimmy Hoffa over Hoffa’s mob ties and Hoffa’s 1971 pardon by President Richard Nixon pushed the Teamsters into primarily supporting Republican presidential candidates from 1972 until 1992, when racketeering charges by President George H.W. Bush’s Justice Department pushed the Teamsters back into largely endorsing Democrats until 2024. ^{14 13 15 16 17}

Under former union presidents Ron Carey and his successor James P. Hoffa, the son of Jimmy Hoffa, the union began a leftward shift in the 1990s. Carey’s ties to left-of-center groups were so close that his victory in the 1996 Teamsters presidential election would later be thrown out and he would be banned for running for re-election by the Teamsters’ federal overseer after Carey was implicated in a scheme to give nearly $1 million from the Teamsters’ general treasury to left-of-center groups such as Citizen Action in return for those groups donating to his campaign. ¹⁸ However, the shifting demographics of the Democratic and Republican parties beginning in the late 2010s have seen many more Teamsters rank-and-file members voting for Republican candidates, most notably for President Donald Trump. ¹⁹ In 2024, internal Teamsters polling of their members found more support for Trump, then the Republican nominee for president, than for then-Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee. ²⁰

After the 2024 election, the Teamsters played a significant role in pressuring President Trump to select Lori Chavez-DeRemer, whose father was a retired Teamsters member, as his Secretary of Labor. The Teamsters lobbied Democratic senators to support Chavez-DeRemer’s confirmation, and 17 did. ¹⁹

History

Founding Era

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters was organized in 1903 at a convention of unions representing drivers of horses, whose profession gave the new union its name. By the 1920s, the union represented drivers in the growing motor transport industry and the Teamsters was admitted to the American Federation of Labor (a predecessor of the AFL-CIO) in 1928. ⁸

By the 1940s, the Teamsters locals in the Detroit area, through which Jimmy Hoffa was rising to prominence, first came under investigation for ties to organized crime. ⁸ The investigations continued into the 1950s, culminating in then-Teamsters general president Dave Beck invoking his Fifth Amendment privileges 117 times in response to a series of questions before the Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field (also known as the McClellan Committee). ²¹ Beck would ultimately be convicted of income tax evasion and embezzling $1,900 from the union. He served 30 months in prison and was later pardoned by President Gerald Ford. ²²

The McClellan Committee’s investigations began a blood feud between the Teamsters and the Kennedy family that lasted throughout Jimmy Hoffa’s tenure as Teamsters president, as Robert F. Kennedy served as chief counsel to the committee and then-U.S. Sen. John Kennedy (D-MA) was a member of the committee. ²³ The Teamsters’ feud with the Kennedys was so intense that after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Jimmy Hoffa resisted lowering the flags at Teamsters headquarters in mourning. ²⁴

Jimmy Hoffa

James R. “Jimmy” Hoffa had risen through the union in the 1940s and 1950s, ultimately ending up as Teamsters vice president and helping create the Central States Pension Fund, which would become notorious as the “mob’s bank.” ^{9 25}

After Beck pleaded the Fifth before the McClellan Committee, the Teamsters elevated Hoffa to the post of general president of the union. Hoffa was already widely suspected of improper behavior, having been charged and acquitted of crimes prior to his election as union president. ²⁶

After Hoffa was named General President, the AFL-CIO suspended and ultimately expelled the Teamsters from the labor federation, citing “corrupt influences.” ²⁶ The AFL-CIO demanded that Teamsters officers Beck, Hoffa, Sidney L. Brennan, and Frank Brewster be removed from office and that the union appoint a special committee to correct the corrupt influences. The Teamsters refused. ²⁶

Hoffa gained notoriety for negotiating the first national truckers’ contract, the Master Freight Contract, in 1964. However, later that year Hoffa was convicted in two separate trials, one for jury tampering and another for misusing union pension funds. ²⁷ Hoffa’s involvement with the mob was substantial: Steven Brill, author of a 1978 history of the Teamsters Union, called Hoffa “an owned-and-operated subsidiary of organized crime.” ²⁴

By 1967, Hoffa was sent to prison to begin serving a 13-year sentence. He would remain jailed until 1971, when President Richard Nixon commuted his sentence on the condition that Hoffa would be barred from union office until after 1980. ²⁸ While imprisoned, Hoffa continued in office as Teamsters president with Frank Fitzsimmons acting on his behalf; Hoffa was widely believed to be running the union from prison despite a sentence condition preventing him from “engaging in his occupation” while jailed. ²⁹

Post-prison, Hoffa attempted to retake union office before the agreed-upon 1980 date. In 1975, while waging legal efforts to regain his position, Hoffa went missing near Detroit around the time he was to meet with two alleged mobsters. His disappearance remains unsolved, but a mob assassination is widely believed to be the cause of the disappearance. ³⁰

Continued Mob Influence After Hoffa

In 1971, Jimmy Hoffa formally left the Teamsters presidency, ceding it to acting general president Frank Fitzsimmons. Fitzsimmons had already pursued an ambitious labor program, aligning with Walter Reuther of the United Auto Workers to form the Alliance for Labor Action, a short-lived left-wing union federation intended to rival the AFL-CIO. The Alliance organized a handful of workers before folding amid an inability to recruit new unions and Reuther’s death in a May 1970 plane crash. ³¹

However, while he would ultimately avoid prison, Fitzsimmons was also linked to organized crime. It is suspected that Fitzsimmons’s willingness to go along with mob bosses led to the alleged hit on Hoffa, who was attempting to return to office despite the mob refusing to support him. ³² Fitzsimmons was said to have received kickbacks and protection from the mafia in exchange for allowing the mob free rein to run Teamsters local unions and skim from the union’s pension funds. ³³

During Fitzsimmons’s tenure, the Teamsters Central States pension fund was investigated by the U.S. Labor Department and the U.S. Justice Department for corruption, and Fitzsimmons himself was ousted as a trustee of the fund. In 1981, Fitzsimmons died of a heart attack. ³⁴

Fitzsimmons was succeeded by Roy Williams, another mob-connected union leader under indictment at the time of his election. Williams served as Teamsters president for two years, vacating office in 1983 after he was convicted of conspiracy to bribe then-U.S. Senator Howard Cannon (D-NV) over trucking industry regulation. Williams would later turn state’s evidence in exchange for being paroled shortly before his death in 1989. ³⁵ Before his death, Williams told the Philadelphia Inquirer that “I was controlled by Nick [Civella, a Kansas City mobster], and I think everybody knew it.” ³⁶

Jackie Presser succeeded Williams, being elected in 1983 after Williams resigned after being convicted. Presser had served as an informer on corrupt Teamsters activities for the Internal Revenue Service from as early as 1972, an arrangement allegedly created to help get federal charges against Presser’s father William, himself an Ohio Teamsters official and member of the Teamsters International executive board, dropped. ³⁷

In 1986, the President’s Commission on Organized Crime reported that Teamsters leadership “have been firmly under the influence of organized crime since the 1950’s” and accused Presser of using violence to control opponents to mob-aligned union officials. ³⁸ Presser, who was allegedly an agent of the Cleveland division of international organized crime syndicate La Cosa Nostra, also became an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. ³⁷

As Teamsters leader, Presser secured readmission to the AFL-CIO but faced considerable scandal related to his involvement with the mob and federal investigations of it. ³⁹ In 1985, the U.S. Department of Justice controversially elected not to charge Presser with embezzling funds from the Cleveland-area Teamsters local. ³⁷ When Presser died in 1988, he was facing federal charges for siphoning union funds to mob figures for no-show jobs. ³⁹

During Presser’s tenure, Teamsters members in Puerto Rico were implicated in one of the worst incidents of labor-related violence in American history. Three members of Teamsters Local 901 pleaded guilty to crimes related to setting a fire at the Dupont Plaza Hotel in San Juan that killed 97 people amid a labor dispute. ⁴⁰ The vice president of the local was also charged with murder, but the charges were later dismissed for lack of evidence. ⁴¹

The Federal Racketeering Suit and Consent Decree

Fewer than two weeks before Presser died, the federal government filed a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act lawsuit against 18 senior Teamsters officials, including Presser and his acting successor, Weldon L. Mathis, to “end La Cosa Nostra’s corruption of this [Teamsters] union.” ⁴² The suit was filed by then-United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York Rudolph Giuliani, who announced in a statement that mob infiltration of the Teamsters “has deprived union members of their rights through a pattern of racketeering that includes 20 murders, a number of shootings, bombings, beatings, a campaign of fear, extortion and theft and misuses of union funds.” ⁴³

The federal lawsuit sought the removal of mob-tied Teamsters leadership and the appointment of a trustee to oversee future internal union elections. ⁴² In 1989, an agreement, known as a “consent decree,” was reached, with the Teamsters agreeing to court-appointed supervision of union expenditures and officer elections in exchange for the government stopping efforts to remove sitting union leadership, then under new union president William J. McCarthy. ⁴⁴

In 1992, as part of the consent decree process, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York directed that an Independent Review Board of three members with one appointed by the federal government, one by the union, and one by both parties be created to investigate corruption and disqualify corrupt members from union office. ⁴⁵

Ron Carey and the Move Left

The consent decree changed how the Teamsters would elect officers. Prior to the decree, officers were elected by delegates chosen by local unions, enabling mob figures to engage in racketeering in exchange for delegate votes. From 1991 onward, the officers were chosen by a vote of the membership at large. The last delegate-chosen general president, William McCarthy, did not seek re-election. ⁴⁶ McCarthy had been charged by a federal overseer established by the consent decree with continuing to associate with organized crime figures. ⁴⁷

That opened the door for Ron Carey, who was backed by the union’s leftist-reformist caucus, Teamsters for a Democratic Union. Carey had served as president of Local 804 on Long Island, which had been implicated in schemes allegedly involving the DeCalvante organized crime family around its pension funds and dental plan. ⁴⁸

Despite concerns of corruption following Carey, he was elected by the membership in 1991 in a three-way race as an “outsider” candidate. ⁴⁹ Trade unionists hoped that Carey’s election would invigorate the Teamsters with a left-of-center political vision, and they felt vindication after he brought the Teamsters back into the Democratic fold to support the election of President Bill Clinton in 1992. The Carey regime was also instrumental in replacing centrist AFL-CIO president Lane Kirkland with radical Service Employees International Union leader John Sweeney in 1995. ⁵⁰

Trouble developed in Carey’s first term when he gave a close ally, Eddie Burke, responsibility for appointing a trustee to oversee Teamsters Local 295 in New York, which had ties to the mob. Burke appointed William Genoese, but the federal judge overseeing the consent decree vetoed the appointment, as Genoese as trustee “would directly and indirectly further and contribute to the association of the [local] with the La Cosa Nostra or elements thereof.” ⁴⁸

Carey was reelected in 1996 by defeating James P. Hoffa, son of the mob-tied Jimmy Hoffa. After his re-election, Carey led a major strike in 1997 against UPS. ⁵¹ With the tacit assistance of the Clinton administration, which broke precedent and refused to invoke the Taft-Hartley Act’s provisions, Carey proclaimed a major victory in the strike. ⁵² The claim was contested by both pro-union and anti-union observers, who noted that workers’ gains were at best modest. ^{53 51}

Carey’s Ouster

While Carey was basking in the glow of his claimed victory over UPS, the federal trustees overseeing the Teamsters moved to void his 1996 re-election over Hoffa on the grounds that he had allegedly used left-leaning groups as shell organizations to launder Teamster treasury money into his re-election campaign. ⁵⁴ Shortly after the new election was ordered, Carey was barred from running and the Independent Review Board recommended discipline against Carey, prompting the Teamsters president to take a leave of absence. ⁵⁵

The scheme allegedly implicated numerous Democratic Party and left-of-center organizations including the Clinton-Gore 1996 re-election campaign, the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the AFL-CIO, and the community organizing group Citizen Action, a predecessor organization of the modern People’s Action. In 1995, the Clinton administration had become concerned by the Teamsters’ cash flow problems, which were hurting party coffers. The Clinton White House put Deputy Chief of Staff Harold M. Ickes in charge of a “Get Cash from Carey” project, seeking to arrange labor decisions in the Teamsters’ favor in the hope of getting support from the union. ⁴⁸

However, the union was not giving because its political action committee, called “DRIVE,” was broke. (Federal law requires that union campaign contributions to federal candidates be sourced from “separate segregated funds” that are opt-in, not from member dues.) That prompted campaign consultant Martin Davis to try to arrange a mutual assistance pact between the DNC and Carey’s union re-election campaign, by which DNC donors would support Carey in exchange for the Teamsters supporting the DNC. Allegedly with the support of future Virginia Governor and then-DNC official Terry McAuliffe, Davis sought to draw contributions to Carey’s re-election slate “Teamsters for a Corruption-Free Union” from DNC donors, with support promised to the DNC in return. ⁴⁸

The effort through the DNC failed. Davis embarked on a money laundering scheme through the AFL-CIO and the left-of-center organizing group Citizen Action. Davis directed Teamsters officials to take $150,000 in union treasury money, and send it to the AFL-CIO through then-secretary-treasurer Richard Trumka who would then pass an equivalent sum on to Citizen Action. Citizen Action then spent $100,000 through Davis’s firm, which supported a direct mail campaign in support of Carey’s re-election. Davis, Carey’s campaign manager Jere Nash, and telemarketer Michael Ansara would plead guilty to offenses related to the scheme and turned state’s evidence. ⁵⁶ Trumka, who would later lead the AFL-CIO, exercised his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination under questioning by the federal judge investigating the matter, prompting the labor federation to reverse its policy requiring officials who took the Fifth to resign. ⁵⁷

The scandal was wider than just the $150,000 in the AFL-CIO/Citizen Action transactions. Former Teamsters political director William Hamilton, Jr. would be convicted and sentenced to prison for directing $885,000 in Teamsters treasury funds to left-of-center groups to be laundered back into Carey’s campaign. ⁵⁸ Carey, though expelled from the union and disqualified from re-running for the presidency, avoided conviction, being acquitted of perjury charges in 2001. ¹⁸

James P. Hoffa

After a controversial campaign in which he also had to survive charges of campaign finance improprieties, James P. Hoffa, son of former mob-tied union president Jimmy Hoffa, was elected Teamsters general president in 1998. Prior to his election, Hoffa had been a union-affiliated labor attorney in Detroit. ⁵⁹

Hoffa continued Carey’s march of the Teamsters toward the political left, joining 1999 anti-capitalist demonstrations in Seattle, opposing the Clinton administration’s trade openings with China, and flirting with endorsing Green Party candidate Ralph Nader before settling on Democrat Al Gore in the 2000 Presidential election. ⁶⁰ Rebuffing efforts at outreach by the George W. Bush White House, the Teamsters endorsed then-U.S. Senator John Kerry (D-MA) in 2004; a similar dynamic played out in 2016, when the union backed Hillary Clinton over Republican Donald Trump. ^{61 62} The union suffered a setback in 2004, when the staff of Hoffa’s pet anti-corruption program, Project RISE, resigned en masse citing “resistance and outright interference” from Hoffa’s lieutenants. ⁶³

In 2005, Hoffa and the Teamsters followed the SEIU under Andy Stern out of the AFL-CIO to form the Change to Win labor union federation. ⁶³ While the other Change to Win members would later rejoin the AFL-CIO, with the SEIU finally doing so in January 2025, the Teamsters has not as of 2025 re-affiliated and remains independent of the federation.  ²

Hoffa and the Teamsters were close allies of President Barack Obama, endorsing the then-Illinois U.S. Senator in the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries. Controversially, Obama had told Teamsters officials that he favored ending the Independent Review Board. ⁶⁴ In 2011, Hoffa courted controversy with overheated rhetoric against the Tea Party movement, telling Labor Day rally-goers: “Let’s take these sons of [b*****s] out” while warming up the crowd for President Obama. ⁶⁵

In 2015, the Obama administration’s U.S. Department of Justice, led by U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara, and the Teamsters Union moved in court to end the consent decree. The government and the union agreed to a five-year phase-out of the consent decree’s rules concerning election supervision and to retain an independent review panel. ⁶⁶ The final remnants of the consent decree ended in 2020. ⁶

Hoffa faced a stiff challenge to his presidency amid major controversy in 2016. Fred Zuckerman, the president of Teamsters Local 89 in Louisville, who was backed by the dissident caucus Teamsters for a Democratic Union, challenged Hoffa as insufficiently militant in contract negotiations. ⁶⁷ The election was thrown into controversy when the union’s Independent Investigations Officer recommended internal charges against Hoffa’s secretary-treasurer and running mate Ken Hall for obstructing a corruption investigation. Ultimately, Hoffa defeated Zuckerman’s challenge by a narrow margin of less than two percent of the vote, securing a five-year term. Charges against Hall were later dropped. ⁶⁸

Presidency of Sean O’Brien

In 2021, Hoffa was succeeded as president by Sean O’Brien, a fourth-generation Teamsters member and outspoken Hoffa critic, who won with Zuckerman running as general secretary-treasurer. In March 2022, both were sworn in along with the new executive board for a five-year term. ^{69 70}

O’Brien succeeded James P. Hoffa following Hoffa’s decision not to stand in the union’s 2021 election. The fourth-generation Teamster is a former heavy-equipment driver who became president of Local 25 in Charlestown, Mass in 2006. He also sits on the board of directors for the Massachusetts Port Authority, and is the co-chairman of the New England Teamsters Pension Fund. ⁷¹

Under O’Brien, the union has made efforts to support the economic left wing of the Republican Party. On July 15, 2024, Teamsters president O’Brien spoke at the 2024 annual Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. O’Brien claimed, “The American people aren’t stupid, they know the system is broken…We all know how Washington is run. Working people have no chance of winning this fight. That’s why I’m here today, because I refuse to keep doing the same things my predecessors did.” ⁷² O’Brien also criticized big businesses like Walmart and Amazon while calling the Chamber of Commerce “unions for big business.” ⁷²

In an October 2024 podcast interview, O’Brien criticized the Democratic Party, saying, “I’ll be honest with you: I’m a Democrat, but they have f—ed 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 f— have you done for us?’” ⁷³

After the 2024 election, the Teamsters played a significant role in convincing Trump to select then U.S. Representative Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR), whose father was a retired Teamsters member, as Secretary of Labor. ¹⁹ Chavez-DeRemer, who had supported key labor union policies in Congress, was viewed as an extremely pro-organized labor pick for a Republican administration. ⁷⁴ The Teamsters lobbied Democratic senators to support Chavez-DeRemer’s confirmation, and 17 did. ¹⁹

The Teamsters have supported some Trump administration trade policies that align with the union’s perceived economic interests, while opposing the administration on other topics such as immigration. ⁷⁵ In May 2025, O’Brien and Teamsters Motion Picture Division director Lindsay Dougherty praised the Trump administration’s announcement of 100 percent tariffs on films produced outside the United States, saying “We thank President Trump for boldly supporting good union jobs when others have turned their heads… The Teamsters applaud any elected official — Republican, Democrat, Independent — who’s willing to fight for American workers.” ⁷⁶

The Teamsters also broadly supported the Trump administration’s controversial “Liberation Day” tariff proposals, with a Teamsters official telling Newsweek, “Something needed to be done, and we welcome this announcement.” ⁷⁷

Contemporary Controversies

Corruption

Teamsters officials continue to be implicated in corruption and fiscal malfeasance even after the consent decree. In July 2017, the president of Teamsters Joint Council 25, John Coli Sr., was charged by federal prosecutors with attempted extortion and taking prohibited payments for a scheme in which he threatened a business with work stoppages unless he was paid $25,000 every three months. ⁷⁸ In 2010, former president of Teamsters Local 812 Anthony Rumore pleaded guilty to charges of making false statements in relation to improper personal services done by union members. ⁷⁹

In 2016, the union’s Independent Investigations Officer recommended charges against four prominent Teamster officials: Hoffa’s executive assistant William C. Smith, international vice president Rome Aloise, former political director Nicole Brener-Schmitz, and secretary-treasurer Ken Hall. ⁸⁰ However, the union did not pursue those charges, leading to criticism from the independent officer, who called the Teamsters’ discipline “inadequate under the circumstances.” ⁸¹

Mismanagement of Pension Funds

For decades, the Teamsters’ pension funds were synonymous with organized crime. ²⁵ In more recent years, they have required massive bailouts by the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) to avoid collapse and insolvency. ¹⁰

In 1955, then-Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa founded the Central States, Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Plan, more commonly known as the Central States Pension Fund (CSPF). It would become notoriously corrupt, described by Forbes in 1980 as “the most abused, misused pension fund in America.” ²⁵ For decades it was known as the “mob’s bank” for the way organized crime families connected to Hoffa and other Teamsters leaders could direct pension fund investments to projects such as Las Vegas casino development, in return for long-term mob influence over those properties. ⁹

The CSPF was placed into trusteeship by the Labor and Justice Departments in the late 1970s and was later governed by a consent decree between the fund and the federal government. ⁸² Decades of corruption and mismanagement took their toll, and by 2018, a Government Accounting Office audit predicted that the CSPF would run out of money by 2025. ¹⁰

In 2022, the CSPF received a $35.8 billion federal bailout under the Biden administration’s Special Financial Assistance program, which was created in the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. ¹⁰ The bailouts were criticized for their effectively “no strings attached” consequences for plan trustees and management, as opposed to the long-time model that would see the PBGC effectively take over management of any insolvent fund. ²⁵ The Biden administration’s rescue of the CSPF was the largest bailout of a private pension fund in American history. ¹²

In June 2023, despite opposition from the U.S. Department of Labor, a federal judge dissolved the consent decrees giving the federal government oversight over the CSPF and its associated Health and Welfare Fund. ⁸² In his ruling, the judge wrote that “the funds’ Trustees and their staff are competent, professional, and in compliance with [the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974].” ⁸²

Less than a year later, in April 2024, a PBGC inspector general’s investigation found that the CSPF had used its federal bailout to make $126.5 million in payments to dead or otherwise ineligible plan members, and the CSPF was required to repay that money to the PBGC. ⁸³

The CSPF was not the only Teamsters pension fund to become financially strained or require a bailout. In 2017, the pension fund for Road Carriers Local 707 in New York defaulted and was taken over by the PBGC, resulting in cuts to retirees’ pension payments. ⁸⁴

In 2016, the New York State Teamsters Pension Fund’s finances became so strained that it requested permission from the U.S. Treasury Department to cut benefits by 20 percent for existing retirees and 31 percent for future retirees. ⁸⁵ In 2022, the fund received a $963.4 million bailout from the PBGC, with another $438 million approved in 2023. ⁸⁶

Controversial Tactics

The Teamsters retain a “union thug” reputation from their days of close association with organized crime, and over-the-line organizing tactics have continued into the modern era. Chicago-area Teamsters were given an injunction in 2013 for allegedly harassing mourners during a labor dispute with funeral homes. ⁸⁷

Boston-area Teamsters faced heavy criticism for an incident in 2014 when the staff of the television show Top Chef were reportedly subjected to racist, anti-gay, and sexist verbal abuse and allegedly had their vehicles’ tires slashed by members of Teamsters Local 25. ⁸⁸

Political Activities

Historically, Teamsters political support has followed the interests of the often-corrupt Teamsters leadership. During Jimmy Hoffa’s leadership, the Teamsters waged a vendetta against the Kennedy family of President John and Attorney General and later U.S. Senator Robert. John had supported the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 (the Landrum-Griffin Act), which sought to combat union corruption like that in the Teamsters union by requiring extensive financial reporting. ⁸⁹ Hoffa personally attacked John Kennedy during the 1960 Presidential campaign, though the Teamsters Union did not endorse either Kennedy or his Republican opponent Richard Nixon. ⁸

The Teamsters also plotted against John’s brother (and Attorney General) Robert F. “Bobby” Kennedy, who engaged in what was described with a “blood feud” with Jimmy Hoffa over Hoffa’s ties to organized crime. ¹⁴ When Bobby ran for the U.S. Senate from New York in 1964, the Teamsters actively worked to attempt to defeat the Democrat. ⁹⁰

After President Richard Nixon pardoned Jimmy Hoffa in 1971, the Teamsters shifted closer to the Republican Party and endorsed every Republican presidential candidate between 1972 and 1988, with the exception of Gerald Ford in 1976. ^{15 13} In 1980, then-Teamsters president Jackie Presser was a member of President Ronald Reagan’s transition team. ¹³ However, after the union and its leadership were indicted on racketeering charges by President George H.W. Bush’s Justice Department in 1989, the Teamsters endorsed his opponent Bill Clinton in 1992. While the Teamsters made no endorsement in 1996, the union would endorse every Democratic candidate for president between 2000 and 2020. ^{15 16}

Under former union presidents Ron Carey and his successor James P. Hoffa, the union began a leftward shift in the 1990s. Between 1990 and 2024, the Teamsters directed 96 percent of the union’s political donations to Democratic Party candidates and allied third-party groups. ⁹¹

According to spending disclosures unions filed with the U.S. Department of Labor, the Teamsters union paid $115,540 to use Democratic Party-aligned data firm Catalist for “strategic plan services” in 2023. In addition, the union donated to advocacy group State Innovation Exchange (SiX) and paid for-profit public relations firm BerlinRosen to use its services. The group also donated $150,000 to left-of-center campaign group Ballot Initiative Strategy Center (BISC), which itself has received funding from other left-of-center groups including Democracy Fund Voice, the North Fund, the JPB Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Susan T. Buffett Foundation. ⁹²

The shifting demographics of the Democratic and Republican parties beginning in the late 2010s have seen many more Teamsters rank-and-file members voting for Republican candidates regardless of the union’s official endorsements, most notably for President Donald Trump. ¹⁹ In 2024, internal Teamsters polling of its membership found more support for Trump than for then-Vice President Kamala Harris, leading to the union’s decision not to make a presidential endorsement in that election. ²⁰

Other Advocacy

Strike for Black Lives

On July 20, 2020, the Teamsters participated in the left-of-center Black Lives Matter-aligned “Strike for Black Lives” protests in 25 U.S. cities. ⁹³

The protests were intended to pressure corporations, elected officials, and other institutions to align with the Black Lives Matter movement’s demands to “reimagine our economy and democracy,” “dismantle racism, white supremacy, and economic exploitation,” and “ensure access to union organizing.” ⁹³

Support for DNC Protests

In June 2024, a Chicago local union of the IBT hosted an anti-war speaking event at its local headquarters where up to 300 activists gathered to discuss plans on disrupting the 2024 Democratic National Convention (DNC). During the meeting, several speakers made pro-Iran comments including “Hands off Iran.” ⁹⁴

Another attendee had reportedly claimed that “Iran is part of the resistance…Yemen and Iran and Hezbollah…and the Syrian government are all parts of the arc of resistance…they’re part of the arc of resistance because the enemies are Israel and the USA.” ^{94 95}

1. “FORM LM-2 LABOR ORGANIZATION ANNUAL REPORT, File Number 000-093 (2024).” United States Department of Labor, March 27, 2025. https://olmsapps.dol.gov/query/orgReport.do?rptId=911199&rptForm=LM2Form.
2. Meyerson, Harold. “Labor’s Prodigal Son Returns.” The American Prospect, January 13, 2025. https://prospect.org/labor/2025-01-13-labors-prodigal-son-returns-seiu/.
3. Gonyea, Don. “#TBT: 40 Years After Jimmy Hoffa’s Disappearance, His Legend Lives On.” NPR. July 30, 2015. http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/07/30/427773947/-tbt-union-man-jimmy-hoffa-is-still-gone-but-the-legend-lives-on
4.  Hammer, Richard. “At Last an Effort to Break the Teamsters’ ‘Devil’s Pact.’” Los Angeles Times, July 10, 1988. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-07-10-op-9370-story.html.
5. Glaberson, William. “U.S. and Teamsters Reach Accord That Avoids a Racketeering Trial.” The New York Times, March 14, 1989. https://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/14/us/us-and-teamsters-reach-accord-that-avoids-a-racketeering-trial.html.
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