WASHINGTON — A Republican lawmaker Wednesday told Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien to “shut your mouth” in a terse exchange at a hearing examining so-called union busting by U.S. corporations.
The tense back-and-forth between O’Brien and Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., escalated right into a screaming match at a hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
The argument began after Mullin, who took over his family’s business Mullin Plumbing, at 20 after his father fell unwell, complained that union pipefitters tried to intimidate him and his 300 plumbing employees to arrange in 2019.
“They’d be leaning up against my trucks. I’m not afraid of a physical confrontation, in actual fact, sometimes, I look ahead to it,” said Mullin, who also owns several other local businesses. “And that is not my problem. But whenever you’re doing that to my employees?”
In addition they picketed outside his job sites, chanting ‘shame on Mullin,’ he said.
“‘Shame on Mullin?’ For what? Because we were paying higher wages … and we (weren’t) requiring them to pay your guys’ exorbitant salaries?” he asked.
O’Brien said the International Brotherhood of Teamsters had examples of employers illegally pressuring staff not to affix unions.
Mullin, who also owns several other local businesses, questioned O’Brien’s six-figure salary. O’Brien was paid greater than $300,000 in 2019, in accordance with essentially the most recent report of union leaders salaries by Teamsters for a Democratic Union, a grassroots organization of members. The Teamsters didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
“What do you bring for that salary? What job have you ever created, one job, aside from sucking the paycheck out of anyone else … since you’re forcing them to pay dues?” Mullin asked.
When O’Brien said Mullin was out of line, the lawmaker shot back: “You’ll want to shut your mouth.”
“We created opportunity because we hold greedy CEOs such as you accountable,” O’Brien told Mullin.
“I’m a greedy CEO? I kept my salary down at about $50,000 a yr because I invested every penny,” Mullin said of his time as CEO of Mullin Plumbing.
“You mean you hid money?” O’Brien responded.
“You’re thinking that you are smart? You’re thinking that you are funny? No, no you are not,” Mullin shot back as committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, tried to quiet the outburst.
During his testimony, O’Brien said that half the senators on the committee “are only willing to supply right-to-work laws.”
“These laws lower wages, create substandard advantages and erode staff’ rights in every state where they’re passed,” he said.
States which have enacted laws guaranteeing that employees won’t be forced to affix a union or pay union dues as a condition of employment are considered “right-to-work” states, in accordance with the Society for Human Resources Management. The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, the nation’s largest federation of unions, argues that the laws complicate union formation and collective bargaining for higher wages, working conditions and advantages.
O’Brien said 1.3 million of his union members lost jobs and even their lives in the course of the pandemic while large corporations like UPS and Kroger made record profits.
“They were going out, providing parcel delivery, providing food distribution, providing rubbish pickup, providing every essential service that we may take with no consideration at times and all of the while, all these big corporations like UPS, Republic waste (Services), Kroger’s grocery warehouses, they were making record profits,” O’Brien said. “My members feel today, that they were taken advantage of. And I feel there’s not only plenty of unionized staff but non-union staff that feel the identical way.”
He said there aren’t consequences when CEOs and firms, calling out Starbucks and its CEO Howard Schultz by name, “break our laws as an alternative of supporting laws to guard our staff’ selection to affix a union.”
Representatives for Starbucks, Amazon, Republic Services, UPS and Kroger didn’t immediately reply to requests for comment from CNBC.
Mullin wasn’t the one committee member to indicate incidents of harassment from union organizers. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., asked the witnesses about an April 20 video showing a employee striking outside of an Amazon warehouse calling a female worker foul names, including “gutter b-tch.”
“This means that it’s valid to be concerned about harassment of employees who seek to not unionize,” Cassidy said.
