Forced Unionism Gets an RNC Platform
While occupying the RNC podium this summer as a self-styled advocate for workers, Sean O’Brien actually has a long track record of bullying workers, union or union free, who stand in his way
Corruption Rife Among All Kinds of Union Bosses
‘Old’ and ‘New’ Guard Big Labor Chiefs May Have Sticky Fingers
On the surface, Shawn Fain and Newton Jones seem to have little in common, other than supporting and benefiting from the nearly 90-year-old provisions in the National Labor Relations Act that authorize and promote the termination of employees for refusal to join or bankroll a union.
Mr. Fain, the head of the United Autoworkers (UAW) since March 2023, styles himself as a class warrior eager to do battle with business.
He is also a public supporter of an array of leftist causes, as well as the Biden-Harris re-election campaign.
Mr. Jones succeeded his father as president of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers (IBB) in 2003. Unlike Mr. Fain, he does not proudly label himself as a socialist.
Indeed, he has generally sought to avoid the public spotlight.
But according to allegations made in legal documents that recently became public, Mr. Fain and Mr. Jones have something else important in common besides their reliance on coercion as a business model: They both have misused union resources.
Mr. Fain and His Lawyers Are Allegedly Stonewalling UAW’s Federal Corruption Monitor
Less than a year-and-a-half ago, Mr. Fain took over the UAW presidency while promising to be completely different from his crooked predecessors Dennis Williams and Gary Jones, who were both sentenced to prison for embezzlement of union funds and other related crimes in 2021.
Of course, as a consequence of rampant criminality among UAW executives and staff in recent years, the federal government is not trusting Mr. Fain to run the union without a monitor. Under a consent decree forced between the U.S. Department of Justice and the UAW brass in 2020, D.C. attorney Neil Barofsky is currently serving as the union’s federal monitor.
And according to a status report issued by Mr. Barofsky on June 10, Mr. Fain is signally failing to cooperate with the monitor’s efforts to investigate and root out ongoing corruption in the UAW hierarchy.
National Right to Work Committee President Mark Mix commented:
“Rank-and-file suspicions the Fain UAW is the same old UAW were already being fueled by reports early this spring about top officials’ decision to hold a forced dues-funded conference on Stellantis bargaining tactics at a hotel/ casino in Puerto Rico, thousands of miles from any U.S. auto factory.
“Now Neil Barofsky has let us know that a UAW secretary/treasurer and a UAW vice president are separately charging that Mr. Fain retaliated against them for being reluctant to or refusing to go along with improper expenditures of dues money.
“Moreover, according to Mr. Barofsky, Mr. Fain and his lawyers are refusing to let the monitor see thousands of documents related to the management of the union, even though they are legally required to share all internal documents with him under the consent agreement.”
Court Filing Alleges Boilermakers Kingpin Stole Millions From Workers
While the distressing allegations about Mr. Fain have made headlines in multiple national publications, only the Kansas City Star has so far reported on former IBB Chief of Staff Tyler Brown’s May 24 guilty plea agreement in a Kansas federal court.
In pleading guilty to racketeering conspiracy, Mr. Brown, who also had served as Newton Jones’ special assistant until 2022, acknowledged his personal awareness that the latter had spent “Boilermakers Union funds on lavish expenses.”
Just for starters, Mr. Jones spent money ordinary workers are forced to fork over in order to be employed in their trade on “private jet flights, upscale restaurant meals, expensive wines, and upscale hotel accommodations which were not necessary to conduct union business . . . .”
The guilty plea also acknowledged that Mr. Jones had “unlawfully converted millions of dollars of the Boilermakers Union funds” to pay for his fellow union bosses and union staff to accompany him on trips to places like Spain, Switzerland, Peru and Thailand!
“While neither Shawn Fain nor Newton Jones has yet to be charged with a crime,” concluded Mr. Mix, “the recent court filings about their alleged abuses add to the mountain of evidence that no union boss, regardless of his or her public image, can be trusted with forced-dues privileges.”
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