In December 2020, the hierarchy of the notoriously corrupt United Auto Workers (UAW) entered into a federal consent decree after a dozen high-ranking union officers and staff members, including former Presidents Dennis Williams and Gary Jones, had been convicted of embezzlement and bribe-taking.
To end a years-long federal investigation of the UAW, the brass agreed that union activities would be overseen for the foreseeable future by federal Judge David Lawson and a monitor to be selected by Mr. Lawson.
As part of its deal to avoid being prosecuted as a “racketeering enterprise,” the UAW agreed that it would not approve any “major contract” until it had received bids, solicited in a fair and competitive process, from at least three different vendors.
Unfortunately, virtually since the day he took over the union in 2023, current UAW President Shawn Fain and his cohorts have evidently violated the consent decree in order to use forced dues-derived union treasury money to reward their political cronies.
According to a recent report issued by court-ordered monitor Neil Barofsky, in early 2024, Mr. Fain led a conspiracy to demote Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock, who had resisted several Fain schemes to hand their pals lucrative no-bid contracts.
With ample documentation, Mr. Barofsky charged that Mr. Fain and his UAW protégés Chris Brooks and Jonah Furman had fabricated evidence against Ms. Mock in order to spur the union executive board to relieve her of her duties as secretary-treasurer.
Later, in order to hide what he had done from the union rank-and-file and from Mr. Barofsky, Mr. Fain allegedly deleted at least 123 text messages from his phone sent out while the plot against Ms. Mock was unfolding. (This ploy failed, because the texts had been saved on other UAW officers’ phones.)
As a consequence of Mr. Barofsky’s revelations, Mr. Brooks has been forced to resign from his position as UAW chief of staff, and Mr. Furman, formerly the union’s communications director, has been suspended and demoted.
Meanwhile, Mr. Fain — the ringleader — remains at the helm of the UAW and is planning to run for reelection this year. Not surprisingly, many UAW “represented” workers are not happy about being ruled over by this shyster. As GM Flint Assembly line worker David Pillsbury told the Detroit News in December:
“This is not transparency. This is not reform. Threats, retaliation and intimidation — that’s what Dennis Williams and Gary Jones were doing.”
National Right to Work Committee President Mark Mix commented:
“As a self-styled ‘class warrior’ who has repeatedly elevated Democratic Socialists of America [DSA] members to high-paid UAW staff positions, Shawn Fain likes to give the impression he is ‘totally different’ from the numerous crooked UAW officials of the recent past.
“But the reality is that Mr. Fain and Gary Jones, who was released from prison in 2022 after serving just nine months of a 28-month sentence, are approximately as different from one another as Patty and Cathy Lane, the ‘identical cousins’ both portrayed by Patty Duke in her eponymous 1960’s sitcom.
“The fact is, the five-year-old UAW consent decree has miserably failed to clean up the UAW, largely because U.S. Attorney Matthew Schneider, who put it together, ignored the Committee’s recommendation that Right to Work protections for employees be made a part of it.
“Cleaning up a crooked union requires workers with a free choice.
“Today, the many Big Labor lickspittles and the handful of Republican elected officials — including Missouri U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley and Ohio U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, now the vice president — who lionized Mr. Fain back in 2023 have gone mute about their former ‘hero.’
“But ordinary autoworkers in states like Missouri and Ohio are still being forced to bankroll this fraud through their union dues, even as thousands of autosector jobs continue to disappear as a consequence of the ‘historic’ contracts Mr. Fain helped forge in 2023. “
It’s long past time for Congress to correct Mr. Schneider’s mistake by passing H.R.1232/S.533, which would guarantee Right to Work protections for private-sector employees nationwide.”
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