UAW President Shawn Fain’s Leadership Could Be in Jeopardy

For over a year, allegations of retaliation, financial misconduct, and union-busting against union leadership have roiled the United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America. The UAW’s court-appointed independent monitor recently released a report that puts the conflict in public view and potentially spells trouble for the union’s president, Shawn Fain.

The report, which contains revelations of internal strife, vindicates dissidents and casts doubt on Fain’s leadership. It also underscores a conflict within the union between old-school labor organizers and those seeking to transform the UAW into a vessel for campus radicalism.

Fain’s reform slate is fractured. On one side are his current allies, a group that now includes individuals from the corruption-tarnished Administrative Caucus he campaigned against, as well as reform-slate members like Brandon Mancilla, LaShawn English, and Daniel Vicente. On the other are former reform-slate members who emerged from midwestern auto locals in 2022, including Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock and Vice Presidents Mike Booth and Rich Boyer.

Notably, the monitor’s report exonerates Mock, who had taken “a strict approach in administering [the UAW’s financial] policies.” Fain allegedly retaliated against Mock for enforcing these rules, which were enacted in the wake of a sweeping corruption scandal that saw more than a dozen top union officials plead guilty to financial crimes.

The monitor found that Fain acted “with illegitimate and retaliatory intent” in orchestrating the removal of Mock’s assignments and board positions. It also called on the union’s international executive board to reinstate her responsibilities.

A majority of the union’s board had targeted Mock, a member of UAW Local 140 at the Stellantis Warren Truck Plant, for trying to fulfill her campaign promises to the membership. In a June 17 statement, Mock said that she was elected “to a position that requires me to zealously guard our union’s finances and our members’ sacred dues dollars.” The monitor found that she had done just that, taking “a strict approach” to implementing the union’s financial policies in order “to fulfill the promise she had made when she ran for office that she would strictly enforce the rules in order to avoid the possibility of further abuses.”

While Mock believed she was honoring her promises to union members, Fain saw things differently. In one reported exchange, after Mock asserted “that she had a fiduciary duty to the members,” the president shot back that her “only responsibility is to sign the f***ing check.”

Fain reportedly went to great lengths to retaliate against the secretary-treasurer. According to the monitor, Fain—concerned that direct retaliation against Mock, who is black, could expose him to charges of racism—enlisted others to do his dirty work. His top staffers, Chris Brooks and Jonah Furman, both tied to Labor Notes—a left-wing organization that fosters the labor movement’s “militant minority”—and members of the Democratic Socialists of America, helped draft and edit a compliance report that served to justify the actions taken against Mock. Fain also allegedly arranged for two black officers to make and second a preplanned motion stripping her of departmental responsibilities.

Fain allegedly engaged in other behavior unbecoming of a union leader. According to the report, he launched into a “tirade” over printed material describing the UAW’s tentative agreement with Stellantis, yelling, “Who told you to put [Mock’s] motherf***ing photo on there? This is my motherf***ing membership.” He then allegedly shouted, “who the f**k runs this mother***ing department?” The report notes that the UAW employee on the receiving end of Fain’s outburst was left shaken and in tears.

In a response submitted to the court on June 20, Harold Gurewitz, the UAW’s attorney and a criminal-defense specialist, argued that the union’s decision to remove Mock’s responsibilities “should not be subject to judicial or governmental interference.” Regardless of the legal merits, the idea that the union president’s personal judgement, no matter how irrational or corrupt, is beyond scrutiny is likely to rankle union dissidents. Some staged a “No Kings” rally outside UAW headquarters in Detroit following the release of the monitor’s report—a message aimed at President Fain, not President Trump.

The publication of the report puts Fain’s tenure as UAW president in jeopardy. UAW Local 7, whose members produce the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango, voted on July 3 to file charges against Fain under Article 30 of the UAW Constitution.

Higher-education locals are not expected to bring similar charges. Two UAW regional directors, who also serve on the union’s executive board, represent many higher-education workers: Brandon Mancilla (educated at Harvard and Williams College) and Mike Miller (educated at UCLA). Both appear to be Fain loyalists. Given the close outcome of the last UAW presidential election, decided by some 500 votes out of over 135,000 cast, Fain needs support from these members. He secured significant majorities in the higher-education-heavy regions represented by Mancilla and Miller.

Those two representatives were reportedly pivotal in the UAW’s embrace of campus radicalism. According to UAW Local 2865, Miller and Mancilla proposed a resolution for the UAW’s executive board to sign on to US Labor for Ceasefire—a joint letter that echoed campus radicals’ core post-October 7 demand regarding the situation in Gaza. The UAW later signed on. The group that produced the joint letter has characterized the Trump administration’s efforts to combat campus anti-Semitism as an “appalling, inhumane, and un-American deportation and union-busting agenda.”

Fain’s ability to cling to power despite his legal troubles now likely depends on higher education’s disproportionate power within the union. Actual autoworkers are perhaps right to be concerned that the tail now wags the dog, on and off campus.

Top Photo by Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images