Hawley Addresses Teamsters Convention: ‘It’s Time We Stood For What Is Right In America’

Hawley Addresses Teamsters Convention: 'It's Time We Stood For What Is Right In America'

Monday, June 29, 2026

U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) addressed the Teamsters International Convention, emphasizing how America's corporations have forgotten right and wrong and placed profit over everyday American workers. Senator Hawley praised the Teamsters for the organization's role in building the great American economy and its focus on working men and women.This comes after Senator Hawley's Faster Labor Contracts Act passed the House of Representatives.

Senator Hawley stated, "The big challenge that we've got today in the United States of America, the big challenge we've got in the economy in America today, is that too many of the people who run the mega corporations have forgotten right from wrong. They've lost their moral compass and we need to help them find it again. These people who sit in the C suite these days, and too many people in Washington, DC, they've forgotten what built this country. This country was built on right and wrong. We built the greatest economy in the history of the world, the most prosperous economy in the history of the world, and I'll say, the most just economy in the history of the world. Why? Because it honored the working person and gave him what he earned. It gave you what you deserved. In this country, you could get married, buy a house, support a family if you got a job and played by the rules. That's what's right and wrong. That's what this country was built on, and that's what we need to get back to in the United States of America today."

"The great American economy didn't just spring into being. We had to build it. More specifically, you built it, Teamsters built it since 1903 your first conference in Niagara Falls, New York. Since that time, you have been fighting for what is right. You've been standing up for the working person and their families. You've been going to bat for those who didn't have a voice…You were born to change the economy in this country, so that a working person could make ends meet, could have a life, could raise a family. And you didn't just fight, and you didn't just try. You succeeded. You built the great American economy, and now it's time we stood and defended it," he continued.

He stated, "There's no amount of profit that justifies the destruction of working families, that justifies treating workers like they're disposable, that justifies destroying whole working communities. No amount of profit will justify that… because there are some things in this life that are more important than profit. This is America, and we know what they are. In America, we believe in that life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, work and home, family, God, country, and all of those things are more important than profit, and it's time that we reminded the people of the C suite of what is what. It's time we reminded them of right and wrong."

Senator Hawley concluded, "This country is built on a promise that if you give a working person a shot and if you give him his liberty under God, there's no telling what he can do. And we've got a lot of challenges that face us now as a country, but I don't know about you. I'm pretty optimistic, because when I look back at the history of the Teamsters, I see we've done it before. We've saved this country, we've saved this economy before, we can do it again. You've been fighting for that great promise, the one my grandfather fought for, and lives and cherishes so much. You've been fighting for that for 123 years, since that first convention in Niagara Falls. And I'm pretty convinced to this, that if the Teamsters are around and strong for another 123 years, I bet America to be around and strong for another 250."

Watch Senator Hawley's remarks here.

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