Teamster Bullies Finished Off Yellow Corp., Have UPS Struggling
Early in 2025, Missouri U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley (R) appeared on “Better Bad Ideas with Sean O’Brien,” a podcast hosted by the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Mr. Hawley said he was a “huge admirer” of Mr. O’Brien’s. The latter praised the senator for capitulating to Teamster lobbying and abandoning his past support for legislation to protect American workers from being forced to pay union dues and fees.
“Early on, when we started talking, we talked about [the] National Right to Work [Act] . . . , and [later] you publicly came out and said you no longer support National Right to Work,” Mr. O’Brien gleefully recalled.
When he first ran for senator in 2018, Mr. Hawley pledged to support the National Right to Work Act, which makes payment of union dues strictly voluntary in all 50 states. But he has never cosponsored this legislation.
“Josh Hawley was more interested in Sean O’Brien and his ‘bad ideas’ than he was in keeping his word to his constituents,” said National Right to Work Committee President Mark Mix.
“Now he is opposing the Right to Work principle supported by 80% of American voters.
“And he is backing a union boss who is responsible for the destruction of tens of thousands of jobs.”
Sean O’Brien to Laid-Off Workers: Your Jobs Weren’t Worth Saving
In 2023, the Yellow Corp. trucking company went bankrupt after 99 years in business.
Company leaders had a plan to restructure the business and keep it afloat, but they needed approval from Teamster officials, who had monopoly control over 22,000 of the company’s 30,000 employees.
Union bosses refused to approve Yellow’s plans.
According to company spokespersons, union negotiators stalled for months, while Mr. O’Brien trashed the company on social media.
Despite knowing his intransigence would likely lead to Yellow’s destruction, Mr. O’Brien callously pressed on, opining that “sometimes a bad job isn’t worth it anymore.”
Yellow went out of business, and 22,000 Teamsters lost their jobs.
“Instead of letting workers decide for themselves if their jobs were ‘worth it,’ Sean O’Brien decided for them,” said Mr. Mix.
“No doubt there were thousands of Yellow drivers who would have preferred to remain gainfully employed with a restructured company. They never got the chance to do that because Mr. O’Brien wanted to appear tough.
“It is highly likely that he chose to abandon the 22,000+ Teamsters at Yellow so that the union would have a more aggressive image at the negotiating table with UPS, where 300,000 employees are Teamster-controlled.”
Since ‘Historic’ Union Contract Was Sealed, 48,000 UPS Employees Have Been Laid Off
Teamster kingpins engaged in prolonged negotiations with UPS in the summer of 2023, using the threat of a nationwide strike as leverage.
Teamster bosses celebrated the contract as a win for workers. But in the fall of 2025, UPS was laying off 48,000 employees as it struggled to compete with FedEx and Amazon, companies whose employees are not subject to monopoly control by Teamster officials.
“The experiences of workers at UPS and Yellow Corp. should appall Josh Hawley, yet he increasingly looks to Sean O’Brien for advice on how to craft supposedly ‘pro-worker’ labor policies,”
Mr. Mix commented. Mr. Hawley and Mr. O’Brien are both promoting the senator’s “Faster Labor Contracts Act,” a bill that sends union contract negotiations to arbitration if they take longer than 90 days, with federal officials gaining the ability to write and impose labor terms on private businesses without worker or company consent.
Asked at a Senate hearing about the prospect of mandatory arbitration being used to take workers out of the equation during a union contract negotiation, a Missouri-based union shop steward testifying on behalf of Big Labor said the signature provision of the Hawley bill would defeat “the whole point of a union.”
“Josh Hawley has ignored Sean O’Brien’s awful track record at the bargaining table. He ignored the warning hiding in plain sight in the title of the O’Brien podcast and decided to run with his ‘ideas’ anyway,” said Mr. Mix.
“If Mr. Hawley and Mr. O’Brien succeed in their plans to change labor laws, workers across the country, not just at UPS and Yellow Corp., will pay the price.”
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