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MONITOR AMOK!  
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Harold Meyerson
July 14, 2026
The American Prospect
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_ The federal court–appointed official overseeing the UAW is taking
sides in the union’s upcoming presidential election. _

Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers, speaks during the
Democratic National Convention, August 19, 2024, in Chicago. , Paul
Sancya/AP Photo

 

There’s a long history of federal government intervention in the
internal affairs of unions. The grounds for such interventions have
usually run the gamut from ideology and politics (e.g., the
Taft-Hartley Act’s purge of Communists from the ranks of union
leaders) to corruption (the control of various unions by organized
crime, e.g., much of the Teamsters until roughly 1990). But the
personal pique of a government official was never really the reason
behind any such intervention—until today.

In the past three weeks, the federal monitor charged with overseeing
the United Auto Workers has become, in effect, the most significant
supporter of UAW Vice President Rich Boyer’s campaign to unseat UAW
President Shawn Fain in the union’s upcoming quadrennial election,
to be decided by a vote of the rank and file in the next few months.
In a settlement reached in federal court in 2020, the union consented
to the oversight of a federal monitor, not because there were any
allegations of mob involvement, but because two former presidents were
in the process of being convicted for spending union funds on their
lavish lifestyles. The agreement stipulated that the union’s leaders
would be chosen by member elections rather than at conventions, and
that its books would be open to inspection to ensure there’d be no
misappropriation of union funds as had been the case in the 2010s. The
court appointed New York attorney Neil Barofsky to serve as the
federal monitor overseeing the union lest any such misdeeds reoccur.

_FEDERAL UNION MONITOR NEIL BAROFSKY HAS PLUNGED HIMSELF INTO INTERNAL
UAW POLITICS._

No such misdeeds have reoccurred, but Barofsky has plunged himself
into internal UAW politics despite that. As I chronicled in an article
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that ran in our April issue this year, Barofsky’s involvement in the
union’s politics began in December of 2023, when the union’s
executive board, at President Fain’s urging, passed a resolution
calling for a cease-fire in the Gaza war. That night, Barofsky called
Fain from Switzerland, where he was working on a different case, to
voice his dissatisfaction with the resolution, acknowledging that he
wasn’t calling in his official capacity. The two had words, and
Fain’s recollection of the call was that Barofsky called him
antisemitic. Shortly thereafter, Barofsky forwarded a statement from
the Anti-Defamation League to all members of the union’s executive
board about what the ADL claimed was the antisemitism of a UAW local.
At the board’s February 2024 meeting, members asked why Barofsky was
involving himself in the union’s politics, while Barofsky protested
he was not really seeking a policy change from them. Infuriated by
both Barofsky’s charges and his denials, Fain said, “For anybody
to ever fucking say I’m antisemitic, brother, I’ll fight your ass
in front of this building in a heartbeat.”

Within weeks of that meeting, Barofsky initiated an investigation of
Fain’s interactions with several UAW leaders, chiefly
Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock, from whom Fain had stripped control
of specific UAW departments (a power which the union’s constitution
grants its president). Fain and Mock were both members of a union
reform slate that had swept into power in the UAW’s 2022 election,
but the clash between Fain’s break-things-to-win-victories staff and
Mock’s by-the-book staff had been fierce. Fain had also stripped
union Vice President Boyer of his control of the UAW’s Stellantis
(formerly Chrysler) division.

In his report issued some months after their dispute at the February
executive board meeting, Barofsky charged Fain with unfairly taking
power from Mock and Boyer, focusing chiefly on Fain’s clashes with
Mock. Fain then agreed to restore the assignments to Mock and Boyer,
and Fain’s chief aide, Chris Brooks, agreed to leave the union lest
Barofsky ask Donald Trump’s Department of Justice to investigate
both Fain and the union.

Three weeks ago, however, Barofsky released another report, focusing
entirely on the interchanges between Fain and Boyer in 2023. In the
report, Boyer alleges that Fain stripped him of his Stellantis
responsibilities out of pique due to his opposition to giving a bonus
to workers at a training center that employed Fain’s fiancée, and
to Boyer’s refusal to help Fain’s fiancée’s sister win
workers’ comp due to an injury she suffered at a Stellantis plant.
The report details at length Fain’s interchanges with the company
when it refused the fiancée’s sister’s workers’ comp claim, as
well as his urging Boyer, as head of the Stellantis division, to help
if he could. Barofsky’s report also includes the reasons Fain gave
for his removing Boyer’s Stellantis responsibilities, most of which
the report disputes.

The most telling aspect of the report isn’t really its conclusions;
it’s its timing. On June 17, Boyer announced he was running against
Fain for the presidency of the union. On June 25, Barofsky released
his report, detailing exclusively the 2023-2024 exchanges between
Boyer and Fain and upholding Boyer’s side of the story. Since then,
Trump’s Justice Department has begun an investigation
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of Fain for the allegations that Barofsky has leveled against him:
providing a bonus to workers at a training center that employed his
fiancée, and trying to help his fiancée’s sister get workers’
comp.

How either of these rises to the level of, say, union leaders spending
union funds on homes in Palm Springs (for which those two former UAW
presidents were convicted) or ceding control of their union to
organized crime (misdeeds, while not common, also not limited to the
Teamsters’ _ancien régime_) is not immediately apparent. Then
again, Trump’s Justice Department has repeatedly shown itself eager
to go after political opponents (e.g., Adam Schiff and Letitia James)
in the absence of any evidence of criminality. That surely must have
occurred to Barofsky before he forwarded his allegations to Trump’s
DOJ.

What does rise to the level of a genuine scandal is the de facto
involvement of a federal monitor of a union in the campaign of a union
leader for the union’s presidency—particularly inasmuch as the UAW
constitution explicitly states that only UAW members and retirees in
good standing may contribute anything of value to any candidate’s
campaign for a UAW leadership position.

Does that put Neil Barofsky in violation of the very constitution
he’s supposed to be defending? Should the Democrats capture the
House or the Senate or both later this year, their respective Labor
Committees may want to summon Barofsky and pose that question to him.

_HAROLD MEYERSON is editor at large of The American Prospect._

_THE AMERICAN PROSPECT is devoted to promoting informed discussion on
public policy from a progressive perspective. In print and online,
the Prospect brings a narrative, journalistic approach to complex
issues, addressing the policy alternatives and the politics necessary
to create good legislation. We help to dispel myths, challenge
conventional wisdom, and expand the dialogue._

_Founded by Robert Kuttner, Paul Starr, and Robert Reich, __read the
original 1989 prospectus for the magazine._
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_To learn more about our history, __check out this 2015 piece by
Starr and Kuttner_
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reflecting on 25 years of politics and change._

_American Prospect, Inc., is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation
headquartered in Washington, D.C._

_You can support our mission with a subscription or a tax-deductible
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