Published
June 17, 2024
United Auto Workers’ president Shawn Fain has been in the news quite a bit lately, although not for good reasons. First was the disastrous loss by the UAW in its organizing campaign against Mercedes. The union was supremely confident entering the election, but when workers actually expressed their opinion in a secret ballot, the UAW met a stunning defeat: 56%-44%.
Second, the UAW has been embroiled in campus protests, supporting picketing graduate students who for some reason belong to a union supposedly dedicated to building cars. These situations got so disruptive that a judge in California ordered the UAW graduate student members to stop protesting and get back to work so students could take final exams.
Third, after touting the contracts the UAW reached with the Detroit Three in 2023, the union has watched as thousands of auto workers covered by those contracts have been laid off.
Finally, new reports claim that Fain has retaliated against union officials who refused to do his bidding, and the union has been accused of withholding documents from a federally approved oversight monitor. The monitor had been appointed to oversee the UAW after a massive scandal involving the theft of money intended for worker training.
The new allegations involve the UAW’s secretary treasurer, who was retaliated against based on “her refusal or reluctance to authorize certain expenditures” for Fain’s office. She was subsequently stripped of all of her field assignments. A UAW vice president has also claimed that he was retaliated against for “refusing to engage in acts of financial misconduct to benefit others.” Finally, the UAW has reportedly turned over just 2,600 of 116,000 documents requested by the oversight monitor — in other words, just 2%.
The UAW had been riding a wave after concluding contract talks in 2023 and winning a vote at Volkswagen in spring 2024. Unfortunately for Fain, that wave seems to have crashed.
About the authors
Glenn Spencer
Spencer oversees the Chamber’s work on immigration, retirement security, traditional labor relations, human trafficking, wage hour and worker safety issues, EEOC matters, and state labor and employment law.
