Socialists Wanted: Compensation $175,000 and up

Holding UAW Office or Staff Job a Lucrative Gig For DSA Radicals

It was two years ago this March that self-styled United Autoworkers “militant” Shawn Fain, boosted by the votes of tens of thousands of grad students who belong to the UAW, but never worked in the auto industry, secured the presidency of this 375,000-member, corruption-plagued union. 

By most commonly accepted standards, he has not done a very good job for the roughly 190,000 production workers who are actively employed in American automaking today and belong to the UAW. 

To start with, thousands of UAW-ruled U.S. production workers have been laid off under the “historic” deals Mr. Fain and other UAW bosses forged with unionized automakers GM, Stellantis and Ford in late 2023. 

But the rise of Mr. Fain has certainly proven to be a financial boon for the, to quote Jerry White of the World Socialist Web Site, “coterie of Democratic Socialists of America [DSA] members and Bernie Sanders operatives” who settled in at UAW headquarters the same time he did in early 2023. 

Unionized U.S. Auto Jobs Disappear as Union-Free U.S. Auto Jobs Increase

Thanks in large part to their federally imposed power to force employees in the 24 non-Right to Work states to bankroll their organization, or be fired from their jobs, international UAW officials raked a total of $109.9 million in compensation last year. 

The 953 UAW staff employed at the national union’s “Solidarity House” headquarters in Detroit amassed an additional $106.7 million in largely forced dues-funded compensation. 

Among the prominent Fain cronies whose ships sailed in with his elevation to the UAW presidency are Harvard-trained Region 9A Director Brandon Mancilla and U. Mass-Amherst graduate Donald “Chris” Brooks. They both collected well over $200,000 in UAW compensation last year. Neither has ever worked in the auto industry. 

Also lacking any auto industry experience is Mr. Fain’s top administrative assistant, Jonah Furman, who last year raked in just over $175,000 crafting PR messages for the UAW brass after previously doing the same thing for Bernie Sanders’ presidential runs and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s congressional campaigns.

National Right to Work Committee Vice President Greg Mourad commented: “If Fain ‘brain trusters’ were actually wielding their extraordinary privileges to improve UAW rank-and-filers’ lives, Mr. Mancilla, Mr. Brooks, and Mr. Furman could plausibly claim to deserve compensation that is unusually high across America for people like them, aged 30-40, with no special skills. 

“But the reality is that UAW-‘represented’ auto workers today probably have even less job security now than they did when crooked, and subsequently imprisoned, former UAW Presidents Dennis Williams and Gary Jones were ruling the roost from 2014 to 2019. 

“Over the course of the three decades plus since the controversial North American Free Trade Agreement took effect in 1994, overall U.S. employment in auto manufacturing has actually increased, thanks to ample gains of union-free American jobs, primarily created in Right to Work states by firms like Nissan and BMW. 

“Unfortunately, auto factory employment for UAW-‘represented’ workers has almost continuously declined, in significant part because of UAW bosses’ counterproductive ‘hate the boss’ class warfare.” 

Fain Henchman Now Blocking Release of UAW Executive Board Meeting Minutes

Mr. Mourad continued: 

“In addition to presiding over the worst job losses in years for UAW factory workers, even though the U.S. economy overall was growing in 2023 and 2024, and is apparently still growing today, Shawn Fain is now the subject of an ethics investigation by the UAW’s court-appointed monitor. 

“Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock, a former Fain ally, claims he demoted her early last year because she refused to authorize improper expenditures he wanted her to greenlight. 

“Moreover, rank-and-file attempts to get to the bottom of what happened have been blocked by Fain minions. Despite a UAW constitutional provision requiring release of executive board minutes, Mr. Brooks is now refusing to release the minutes for the 2023 and 2024 meetings so unionists can decide for themselves why Ms. Mock got demoted.” 

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