WASHINGTON — Senator Markwayne Mullin, Republican of Oklahoma, challenged the head of the Teamsters union to a fight during a U.S. Senate hearing Tuesday aimed at showing how unions improve the lives of families.
The tense hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee was fueled by vitriolic social media posts, as well as a confrontation between the two committees at an earlier Senate hearing.
Tuesday’s episode began with Mullin reading aloud from a book by Teamsters boss Sean O’Brien posts on Xformerly known as Twitter. In the post, O’Brien called Mullin a “greedy CEO who pretends to be self-made.”
O’Brien, general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, ended the post with the words, “You know where to find me. Anywhere, anytime, cowboy.”
“This is the time, this is the place,” Mullin, who has a background in mixed martial arts, told O’Brien, who was seated at the witness table in front of him. “If you want to talk, we can be two consenting adults. We can end this here.”
“OK, fine,” O’Brien said. “Perfect.”
“Do you want to do it now?” Mullin asked.
“I wish I could do it now,” O’Brien said.
“Then get up,” Mullin said.
“Stand tall,” O’Brien said.
Both men rose. Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, an 82-year-old independent from Vermont, intervened and asked them to take their seats.
“You are a United States senator,” Sanders told Mullin. “This is a hearing. God knows the American people have had enough of this disdain for Congress, let’s not make it worse.”
The rest of the time, as Mullin questioned O’Brien and other witnesses, the two continued to hurl insults at each other. Sanders banged his gavel and yelled at them, trying to break up the heated exchange.
“We’re not here to talk about arguing or anything else,” Sanders said.
Mullin and O’Brien also had a tense moment previous committee hearing in March. In another fasting on the X show, O’Brien told Mullin, “It sounds like you should shut your mouth and get to work for the people of your state.”
UAW strike
Another key witness at the hearing, titled “Confronting Corporate Greed: How Unions Improve the Lives of Working Families,” was Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers union.
The union has achieved preliminary agreements in overdue October with the “Big Three” automakers — Ford Motor Co., Stellantis and General Motors. The strike he started in Detroit in mid-September, but it was expanded to over 20 other states.
“The working class needs this committee and the entire Congress to rise to the occasion,” Fain said. “You all have a vital role to play, not only supporting our struggles and others like ours, but also finishing the work for economic and social justice for the entire working class.”
Fain spoke about the success of the UAW strike and its domino effect. He mentioned that the auto companies Honda, Toyota and Hyundai raise wages since the UAW agreements.
“In less than seven weeks, we won justice for our members and other employees,” Fain said.
Fain said the UAW’s actions helped significantly raise wages for more than 100,000 workers, improve retirement security, provide jobs and ensure workers have a “just transition” to electric vehicle production.
Fain said the change will allow auto workers to “transition” to novel jobs producing batteries for electric vehicles.
Legislative Efforts
Sanders, who supported the UAW strike, drew attention to his legislation — Protecting the right to organizeotherwise known as the PRO Act — as a measure aimed at making it easier for American workers to organize.
Rep. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, said the PRO Act faces opposition from within his party.
U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a Wisconsin Democrat, said she is working on legislation that would require the Federal Trade Commission to additionally “consider the impact of the merger on workers.”
“It is the employees who bear the greatest costs of the consolidation of, as they call it, ‘efficiency,’” Baldwin said.
Protection of the right to organize in trade unions
Union organizers called on Congress to do more to facilitate U.S. workers.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is a union with members from a variety of professions. The largest employer in the Teamsters is UPS, which reached a collective bargaining agreement earlier this year. The agreement improved wages and working conditions for UPS workers.
“We need to hold our elected officials to account and do the right thing,” O’Brien told senators.
Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants and Communication Workers of America, said unions are “essential to a stable economy, our safety, security and democracy.”
Republican witnesses included Diana Furchtgott Roth, director of the Center for Energy, Climate, and the Environment and a Herbert and Joyce Morgan Fellow in Energy and Environmental Policy at the Heritage Foundation, and Sean Higgins, a research associate at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Arlington, Virginia.
The Heritage Foundation and the Competitive Enterprise Institute are conservative think tanks.
Higgins said wage increases resulting from union strikes could push up inflation.
In response, Fain later said the idea that raising wages negatively impacts the economy is rooted in “scaremongering.” Fain said that when unions negotiate a contract that includes higher wages, the opposition often believes “the world is going to end because the working class is making a living wage, and that will drive up the price of vehicles.”
Senator Bob Casey (Democrat of Pennsylvania) said workers’ right to unionize “is in jeopardy.”
“Every day of the week, that right is under threat across the country,” Casey said. “That right to organize is essential to building an economy that works for all Americans.”
