This month, the UAW federal monitor Neil Barofsky accused the UAW, which is under a federal consent decree, of refusing to turn over documents regarding the demotion of UAW Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock and UAW Vice President Rich Boyer.
Payday Report has learned that UAW President Shawn Fain’s top legal advisor, Nathaniel Charny, is a convicted felon who pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice charges for hiding information regarding embezzlement in the Teamsters in the 1990s. Twenty-five years later, Charny and his legal team are again accused of hiding information from the union’s membership.
The federal monitor seeks to obtain thousands of internal union emails regarding the purge of some of UAW President Shawn Fain’s top allies, including Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock and Vice President for Stellantis Rich Boyer, but the UAW has resisted.
A court-ordered, confidential survey of several hundred UAW staffers showed that 40% of UAW staffers feared retaliation if they spoke about problems within the UAW.
Barofsky, who won praise from many progressives for his role as special inspector of TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) during the Obama administration, is facing a smear attack from a progressive journalist – Ryan Grim, previously of The Intercept, who recently launched his own publication, Drop Site News, with Jeremy Scahill.
Grim is a progressive superstar with over 350,000 followers on Twitter (X) and host of the hit web show Counterpoint, which has over 1 million subscribers on YouTube.
Grim recently won praise for questioning the New York Times reporting on sexual assaults committed by Hamas during its attack on October 7. Now, he has used his perch as a respected journalist to run a hit job accusing Neil Barofsky, who’s Jewish, of having a secret Zionist agenda in his role as the UAW’s federal monitor. The union has called for a ceasefire in Gaza.
However, nowhere in Ryan Grim’s reporting on UAW’s federal monitor has he disclosed that his managing editor and co-founder of Drop Site News, Nausicaa Renner, is married to the UAW Communications Director, Jonah Furman.
Furman controls the UAW’s multi-million dollar media budget and is a powerful figure within the labor movement. He’s given work to scores of progressive videographers and communicators and used the power of the UAW’s vast social media space to make the work of their preferred journalists go viral.
Now, through interviews with UAW members, legal experts, and a review of legal documents, Payday Report has learned that Grim’s reporting, based on one anonymous source, is not accurate.
In our 16-month long investigation, Payday Report, has discovered a troubling and well-documented pattern of intimidation and retaliation against those who speak up against misconduct in the UAW.
At a time when the UAW has taken a major setback following the defeat of the union drive at Mercedes in Alabama, this expose by Payday Report raises troubling questions about the dysfunctionality and abuse of employees within the UAW by the Fain administration.
“In the words of Union employees that Internal Audit reported to be representative of this cohort, the Union needs to “[e]nd the toxic idea that fear is a motivator,” “[c]orrect the retaliation,” and “remove the culture of fear of retribution” at the union,” wrote Bafofsky in his 124-page monitor report provided to the UAW’s rank-and-file.
UAW President Shawn Fain Purges Three Top Allies
In February, the UAW International Executive Board (IEB), led by President Shawn Fain, announced that they had stripped Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock of her responsibility overseeing various organizing projects and departments of the UAW.
Just two years earlier, Fain, a white Bible-quoting factory worker from rural Indiana, had tapped Mock, a Black autoworker from Detroit, to be his running mate. During the campaign, incumbent UAW President Ray Curry, a Black man from North Carolina, made issues of Fain being white.
Mock’s inclusion as a Black woman undoubtedly helped Fain’s ticket win narrowly, with only 483 votes cast out of a total of 136,485 votes from the UAW’s rank-and-file.
Less than a year after serving as Fain’s running mate, her demotion shocked many, particularly Black union members, who constitute approximately 25% of the UAW’s membership.
“Without Margaret Mock, there is no way that Fain beats Curry. It’s shocking and no one has clear answers about what’s happening,” one concerned UAW member told Payday Report.
In the wake of a federal scandal that saw many top UAW officers go to jail on charges of embezzlement, bribery, and self-enrichment, Mock implemented an open bid process that made the union’s financial spending practices more transparent and tried to move the UAW away from a system of political patronage that has existed in the union for many decades.
But her new accountability measures angered Fain, who successfully sought to have her demoted in February, claiming that she was hindering the UAW’s ability to quickly spend money on key organizing projects.
After her demotion, Mock filed a complaint with federal monitor Neil Barofsky to investigate.
“When policies are established by the UAW International Executive Board, and/or by the special monitor ordered by the court to oversee the UAW, and/or by federal agencies, it is my responsibility when these policies concern UAW finances to diligently make sure these policies are adhered to,” Mock said in a statement to the Detroit Free Press. “While it saddens me even further that I get criticized, attacked and retaliated against because I insist on the policies that are in place be adhered to, I will not waver in enforcing financial policies intended to protect our members’ sacred dues dollars.”
As part of the federal consent decree, a federal judge appointed Neil Barofsky to be the federal monitor of the UAW in 2021.
Under the federal consent decree, Barfosky has the right to demand emails about internal decision-making over spending matters and publish the information in regular reports. UAW members read the reports religiously as they debate the union’s tactics and strategy.
Union members were clamoring for more information about what was happening to the top leaders.
“The head of the UAW removing the VP—that’s huge,” UAW Local 7 President Eric Fleming told The Detroit News. “There’s confusion on the (plant) floor.”
Mock requested that Barfofsky investigate these matters and publish independent findings so that rank-and-file UAW members could have a clear idea of the feud between the union’s elected leaders.
In addition to Mock being demoted, UAW’s Vice President for Stetallantis workers, Rich Boyer, was also removed from office for “dereliction of duty,” as Fain told union members last May.
After reaching deals with Ford and GM during the “Stand Up Strike,” the union rushed to reach a deal with Stellantis as well. The quickly-reached deal agreed to controversial language that has resulted in the layoffs of thousands of Stellantis temp workers. As the summer progressed and layoffs intensified at Stellantis, Boyer faced criticism from UAW leadership. He claims that Fain and his senior staff, including Benjamin Dictor and Chris Brooks, were aware and pushed the deal by the UAW at Stellantis.
“Your action against me implies that you or your staff had no visibility or involvement in our discussions during the 2023 negotiations with Stellantis.” Boyer added that Fain’s comments were a “blatant lie, insult and personal attack on my credibility.”
Boyer says that he had opposed several of Fain’s spending decisions. In particular, Boyer had opposed Fain’s attempt to give his romantic partner and her sister an enhanced early retirement as part of their leaving the joint UAW-Chrysler National Training Center.
When running against incumbent UAW President Ray Curry in 2022, Fain and his allies heavily criticized the practice of keeping relatives and romantic partners on the union payroll. They also attacked previous UAW President Rory Gamble for having his son employed at the Center.
“Ten union and three Fiat-Chrysler executives have been charged with using Center funds to finance their lavish lifestyles, and some are already in jail,” wrote Fain’s top strategist, Chris Brooks, in 2019. “But the Center served another purpose: as a source of jobs, including sham jobs, for friends and family of union officials.”
As people within the UAW raised questions about the employment of Fain’s romantic partner and her sister, talks began about how to figure out a way for the two to leave the union.
As part of the negotiations, Fain requested that his partner and her sister receive an enhanced retirement package so that they could retire early. To avoid having the enhanced early retirement package raise regulators’ eyebrows, Fain requested that every worker at the Training Center get the same “bump,” a provision that Boyer objected to as being too costly.
The demotion of Fain’s running mate and top Vice President in Stellantis continues a troubling pattern of Fain purging his top allies when they don’t agree with him.
In March 2023, Payday Report obtained documents showing that Fain had already fired his previously hand-picked chief of staff, Joe Rioux, and most of his previously chosen top senior staffers.
The mass firings came after Rioux and then-top Fain staffers raised concerns about the top-down approach of a controversial Brooklyn-based union consultant Chris Brooks. After other staffers voiced similar concerns, Fain also fired top allies, including Anna Bakalis, Jonathan Smuckler, Sarah Saheb, and Allison Troy. Later, Susan Pratt chose to resign in solidarity with them.
Rioux addressed concerns regarding the dismissal of Fain’s previously selected senior leadership team and its implication for the UAW reform movement in a 5-page memo written on February 22, after his dismissal. (See Payday’s 2023 story “UAW Challenger Fain Purges Top Allies in Favor of Brooklyn Consultants”)
Fain’s senior top staffers had expressed their concern about naming an inexperienced white social media-savvy former labor writer to a top leadership position within the very racially diverse UAW. The union’s previous incumbent president, Ray Curry, is a 58-year-old Black man from North Carolina.
Payday Report obtained a five-page memo in which Rioux voiced similar concerns that Brooks, a long-time Brooklyn-based union consultant, routinely downplayed and short-shrifted the perspectives of Black workers. Furthermore, the group of close Fain allies expressed deep concerns that Brooks, who Fain has chosen as his right-hand man despite having never worked for the UAW or being a member of a UAW bargaining unit, operated in a style that could severely hurt the UAW reform movement.
In June of 2020, Brooks drew heavy criticism when he dismissed the possibility that Black Lives Matter was inspiring a massive upsurge of strike activities in the early stages of the pandemic.
Brooks’ comments led many Black leaders to criticize him as racially tone-deaf. Others worried that Brooks was insecure and obsessed with control.
“My concerns and the concerns shared by the team members listed above are that Chris has assumed a role in the transition and in your future administration that he does not possess the experience or personal maturity to carry out,” Rioux wrote. “In a short time, his lack of transparency, his need for control over departmental discussions, his need to control access to you, and his apparent lack of ability to work in a real collaborative manner became apparent.”
After Rioux and his allies left Fain’s transition team, Chris Brooks proposed that the union engage in purges of staffers in the union that was narrowly divided during the union’s presidential election in 2023. Brooks suggested that UAW leadership investigate its workforce to see who was loyal.
“ID those we can work with, move the program, ID those who need to be purged,” Brooks wrote in an email obtained by the Detroit Free Press in 2023.
The demotion of the UAW’s Black Secretary-Treasurer, Margaret Mock, brought back to the surface a feeling of uneasiness among union members, particularly Black union members.
In court documents, Barofsky is now charging the UAW with failing to turn over information about Fain’s purge of his allies.
“As of the date of this Report, more than three months after the Monitor’s initial document request, the Union has produced a very small portion (approximately 2,600 documents) of the current potentially relevant pool of approximately 116,000—and with more than 80% of those documents only produced on June 6, 2024, days before the issuance of this Report,” charged Barofsky in court documents filed in June. “There has been a similar lack of production for the Monitor’s embezzlement investigation into one of the Union’s Regional Directors.”
The union has justified its delays by advancing arguments that the decisions regarding Mock’s demotion were privileged information. However, both the Department of Justice, which is overseeing the consent decree governing the UAW, and the federal monitor have rejected this argument.
If access is given to the documents, it could hurt Fain politically within the union, giving the Fain administration a motive to conceal them.
Barofsky’s federal monitor reports paint a troubling picture within the UAW of union staffers and leaders frustrated by Fain’s quest to consolidate his power base and purge union leaders that he sees as disloyal.
“A recent culture assessment—conducted by the Union’s Internal Audit function— uncovered remnants of that culture still at the union. On the one hand, there were several positive aspects of the culture assessment, with most Union staff members reporting that they feel a strong sense of mission and purpose-driven employment; gain ‘a sense of personal fulfillment from [their] work;’ and feel ‘motivated and inspired’ by the UAW’s identity,” wrote Barofsky in a report sent to the union’s membership in July.
But while the UAW and its telegenic president, Shawn Fain, were getting good press, a survey of hundreds of UAW staffers conducted by the Monitor’s office showed that feelings within the UAW were also very troubling.
“But, based on the hundreds of anonymous survey responses, the culture assessment also found divisions and silos within the union that are negatively impacting the union’s culture. For example, the survey revealed that a concerning number of Union personnel continue to fear retaliation if they were to report misconduct, and that many harbor the same kinds of concerns that were present at the start of the monitorship,” wrote Barofsky.
Barofsky’s 124-page report was sent to the UAW’s 300,000 members and widely read. For many union members, it raised deep questions about Fain’s purge within the UAW.
“Although the Monitor will make no judgment on whether the actions of the President were appropriate until after he concludes the investigation described in the Monitor’s Ninth Status Report, these events have been perceived by Union staff—that already has significant concerns about a “culture of fear of retribution”—as confirmation that even the highest-ranked Union officials can be subject to retaliation,” wrote Barofsky in July.
“Specifically, reports to the Monitor’s Hotline from Union staff have cited the actions taken against the Secretary-Treasurer and Vice President as driving retaliation fears that reporting alleged abuses might lead to retribution from the President’s Office,” wrote Barofsky. ”Given the fragility of the union’s cultural perception of retaliation, whether they were appropriate or not, how these recent acts are perceived by the union’s staff must be taken into account when tackling this persistent cultural challenge.”
One long-time UAW local leader joked with me that Fain was like “Walter Reuther both in a good and bad way – you got (to) remember Reuther purged a lot of people.”
Confidential data from surveys of several hundred UAW staff conducted by the Monitor found a deep culture of fear within the UAW.
“In the words of Union employees that Internal Audit reported to be representative of this cohort, the Union needs to ‘[e]nd the toxic idea that fear is a motivator,’ ‘[c]orrect the retaliation,’ and ‘remove the culture of fear of retribution,’ at the union,” wrote Bafofsky in July.
“The data gathered during the survey underscores the widespread nature of the concerns of these staff members. For example, of the approximately 100 Union staff who reported that they witnessed unethical behavior or misconduct during the 12 months prior to the survey, over 30% said that they did not report the misconduct they witnessed. All survey participants were asked why they would not report misconduct if they saw it, and, in response, over 40% of respondents said that they would decline to report out of fear of retaliation. Calls to the Monitor’s Hotline have independently and repeatedly echoed these same concerns,” concluded Barofsky.
Barofsky wrote that both Fain’s Secretary-Treasurer and Vice President for Stellantis complained that they were removed from their assignments within the union because they would not go along with spending requests from the UAW.
The demotions had a chilling effect on debate within the union.
“Specifically, reports to the Monitor’s Hotline from Union staff have cited the actions taken against the Secretary-Treasurer and Vice President as driving retaliation fears that reporting alleged abuses might lead to retribution from the President’s Office,” continued Barofsky. “Given the fragility of the Union’s cultural perception of retaliation, whether they were appropriate or not, how these recent acts are perceived by the Union’s staff must be taken into account when tackling this persistent cultural challenge.”
Bernie Bros from Brooklyn Push Out Rank-and-File from UAW Communications Office
One person, who found their political patronage system threatened by Mock’s open bid process is UAW Communications Director Jonah Furman, who controls the union’s multi-million dollar media budget. Furman, a DC-based union consultant, had previously worked as the top labor liaison for the Bernie Sanders campaign and at Labor Notes.
With over 60,000 Twitter followers, Furman is a social media powerhouse and commands a legion of labor fans, who have turned Fain into the most famous labor leader in the country.
However, members of the UAW’s Local Union Communication Association (UAW-LUCA) complained that Furman was turning away from previous hires from the rank and file of the UAW to hire Beltway-connected consultants, hiring many of the talented content makers of the Bernie campaign.
The hires paid off and made Fain a household name, but rank-and-file UAW members felt left excluded.
“The latest round of hiring for the International UAW Communications Department is to be filled with all candidates that are non-UAW candidates, bringing the department to a ratio where less than 50% (fifty percent) of the staff was UAW before entering the department,” wrote the rank-and-file members in a leaked petition obtained by Payday Report.
The group of UAW leaders signing it included Jessie Kelly of UAW Local 160, Luiji Gukal of UAW Local 51, Lynda Jackson of UAW Local 7, Ben Bell of UAW Local 7, Jackie Robinson of UAW Local 160, and Kristian Graham of UAW Local 228.
“We the undersigned UAW-LUCA representative(s), petition a meeting with Jonah Furman to discuss the recent decision and direction of the department to cease to use content that is created by rank and file UAW members until the International UAW Communications Department is represented by a majority of staff, whom were UAW members prior to accepting the role in the department,” wrote the group.
With Fain facing increasing pressure from within the UAW and complaints that they lost a high-profile UAW election in Alabama over a digital media-heavy and organizing-light model, he has increasingly relied on Furman to work his contacts in the press.
In June, Barofsky filed a complaint in court asking a federal judge to order the UAW to hand over more documents. A rash of negative headlines appeared about the UAW.
Then, a story relying on one anonymous source appeared accusing Barofsky, who had served as a monitor investigating Credit Suisse for hiding Nazi money, of having a Zionist bias.
The UAW’s social media influencer allies kicked into high gear to brand Barofsky a Zionist, one who was upset over the UAW’s position on Gaza and was retaliating by investigating Fain’s controversial purges. The reporting mentioned nothing about the court-ordered survey of hundreds of UAW employees that showed widespread fear of Fain’s purges of allies suspected of disloyalty.
Ryan Grim, the author of the viral hit piece that relied on a single anonymous source, failed to mention one key point: that his top editor was married to the UAW’s Communications Director Jonah Furman.
ADL Threatens UAW with Anti-BDS Lawsuit
In early July, Ryan Grim left The Intercept and launched a new non-profit site called Drop Site News with famed Intercept founder Jeremy Scahill.
The site’s first viral article was entitled, “The UAW’s federal monitor twice pressured the union to back off its call for Gaza ceasefire, then launched an investigation.”
Grim wrote, “Barofsky’s pursuit of Fain has less to do with concerns over union self-dealing and more to do with the politics of Israel-Palestine.”
As evidence, Grim presented a potential legal threat issued by the ADL against the UAW’s Local 7092 at NYU and The New School. UAW activists at the schools had been calling for BDS (Boycott, Disinvestment, and Sanctions) against Israel for the ongoing campaign of genocide that Israel has pursued in Gaza.
New York State’s first-in-the-nation anti-BDS law requires state and local governments to divest from any group engaged in BDS calls.
With the UAW representing public and graduate employees at public universities, the state could be forced to divest from the UAW’s pension and retirement funds, or possibly even not provide dues check-off for the union. New York State law has allowed the state to strip unions of dues check-off if they violate state law.
Having been sent a serious legal threat, Barofsky informed UAW President Shawn Fain of the threat in December and forwarded the letter from the ADL to the International Executive Board (IEB).
“Although this issue is outside of the Monitor’s jurisdiction, we thought it was important to forward the message to the IEB given the serious concerns raised here,” Barofsky wrote in an email to the UAW’s International Executive Board members. “For what it’s worth, as I previously shared with Shawn, similar concerns were raised directly to me shortly after the IEB issued its own ceasefire statement.”
In an International Executive Board meeting attended by top UAW officials, Barofsky again brought up the legal letter from the ADL. Later, one of the UAW’s attorneys objected to Barofsky informing the UAW of the threat from the ADL.
While the 58-year-old veteran labor lawyer Nathaniel Carny, a felon convicted of conspiracy for obstruction of justice, has played a key role leading the legal department, it was the much younger 36-year-old Jewish attorney, Benjamin Dictor, who sent a letter to Barofsky.
“We ask that such respect be mutual and that your Office be respectful of the guardrails on your role and refrain from any further communications of the sort discussed in this email,” wrote Dictor in an email to Barofsky on February 23, obtained by Drop Site News.
After Dictor’s email, Barofsky never mentioned the letter that he received from the ADL.
Ryan Grim Doesn’t Disclose That His Editor is Married to UAW Communications Director
On February 29, the Detroit Free Press broke the news that UAW Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock had been demoted from most of her assignments as a labor leader in the UAW. The same day, Barofsky sent a letter to the UAW asking for information about the demotion of UAW’s second-ranking officer.
According to Grim, Barofsky’s investigation of Mock’s demotion came as direct retaliation for the union’s support of a ceasefire in Gaza.
“On February 29, just six days after the UAW sent its letter to Barofsky complaining about his improper lobbying, Barofsky sent the UAW a sweeping demand for documents, saying he was opening an investigation into Fain over a dispute Fain had with the Secretary-Treasurer,” wrote Grim.
However, Labor law experts, including anti-Zionist ones like the University of St. Louis’s Mike Duff, say that Barofsky, as a lawyer, may have had merit in forwarding a potential legal threat from the ADL to the UAW.
“I think forwarding a letter from the ADL out of concern that the union risked violating the anti-BDS law (leaving questions of constitutionality to one side) arguably fell within the monitor’s legal-ethical duty,” said Duff.
Some within the UAW have been pushing for the union to support BDS. However, concerns about legal and financial consequences have led to UAW International Executive Board members voting down BDS resolutions so far.
If the UAW, in its own international executive debates, is worried about the legal and financial consequences of BDS, why would it be strange for the UAW’s federal monitor to forward a legal threat from the ADL, a Zionist organization known for suing critics of Zionism?
Grim wrote in his article that “Barfosky also asked for ‘any and all emails, text messages, and instant messages’ sent between Fain, his top deputies, and his lawyers, from February 12 through February 23, 2024. That covers pretty much the exact time the UAW and Barofsky were jockeying over the ADL’s complaint about their call for a ceasefire.”
However, nowhere does Grim mention that Barofsky’s investigation was launched by the complaint filed by the UAW Secretary-Treasurer. Clearly, union members would want to know why the #2 elected union officials were demoted.
University of St. Louis labor law professor Mike Duff says it’s hard to see Grim establish that Baforsky engaged in punitive measures against the UAW.
“It is a pretty vague threat. I can’t understand what the union was being threatened with since the monitor could already ask for anything he wanted related to his function,” says Duff.
The UAW did not return multiple requests for comment for this story.
Barofsky has denied ever expressing his views on Palestine. The evidence against him is merely that he forwarded a letter from the Anti-Defamation League, a controversial group that has sometimes stretched definitions of antisemitism to include anti-Zionism.
“This false account is offensive and an obvious attempt to distract attention from the most recent report,” Barofsky told the New York Times. “We have adhered to standard norms of a monitorship in referring complaints to union leadership.”
No evidence exists tying Barofsky to Zionist groups or expressing Zionist beliefs beyond him fulfilling his legal duty to forward the lawsuit threat from the ADL.
However, Fain’s allies on social media have repeatedly pointed to Barofsky being praised by the World Jewish Congress for his work as a federal monitor of Credit Suisse, investigating the bank’s role in hiding Nazi money stolen from Jews.
Progressive activist and author Matt Stoller, who is Jewish, says that he detests the ADL and feels they manipulate antisemitism to support Israel’s horrific war.
As someone who was a staffer on Capitol Hill during the bailout, he says that the attack on Barofsky is a “smokescreen” designed to smear Barofsky for speaking out against the purges that Fain has initiated within his union.
“I worked with him during the financial crisis and he showed immense integrity in standing up to the biggest bank in the world as well as a lot of corrupt people in the Obama Administration,” says Stoller.
Barofsky was heavily smeared by the Obama Administration and faced threats that his role as special inspector general of TARP would be defunded.
“He was very honest under immense pressure and it would be very hard for me to imagine that he would be doing something unethical here. I’ve never seen him do that and I’ve seen him under some pretty intense pressure.”
Afterward, Barofsky published a book in 2012 titled “Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street”, which was a widely read New York Times bestseller.
The book was a gripping account detailing how the Obama Administration attempted to retaliate against him for accurately reporting on the Bailout as special inspector general.
“I thought that if there was ever going to be a political figure that would take on the interests of Wall Street, it was going to be President Obama. And that just didn’t happen,” Barofsky told Bill Moyers in a widely watched interview in 2012. “It was the exact opposite of that… He had the same ideology as Secretary Geithner and, frankly, the same ideology as a lot of those people who came from Wall Street.”
Barofsky’s forwarding of the ADL’s threat occurred in February. So, why would the UAW wait till they were in trouble for not turning over documents to raise this issue?
Furthermore, if Barofsky did engage in political interference, the federal judge has the power to remove him from the case. Given that parties in federal monitorship often record meetings, why would Barofsky risk losing his federal monitorship by bringing this issue up?
Currently, it’s the word of Neil Barofsky, who would face severe legal penalties if he was lying, versus just one anonymous source, who spoke to a reporter, whose editor was married to the Communications Director of the UAW.
The UAW’s own legal team has a checkered past, which would lead one to doubt their credibility.
Nathaniel Charny, one of the top lawyers at UAW, who’s responsible for helping to steer their legal strategy, was convicted of conspiracy to engage in obstruction of justice by the federal monitor of the Teamsters in 1998.
Charny cooperated with federal authorities in their investigation and was able to keep his law license after an 18-month license suspension as punishment.
The younger Jewish lawyer Benjamin Dictor, who wrote a letter complaining about Barofsky’s forwarding of the legal threat from the ADL, is also in Barofsky’s crosshairs. Barofsky has asked the federal judge for Dictor’s and other UAW’s lawyer’s emails and correspondence, which Dictor has resisted.
After taking over as counsel of the New York NewsGuild, Dictor faced criticism from New York Times reporters for not presenting a yearly budget of legal expenses.
An analysis by Payday Report of federal Department of Labor financial records in July 2021 showed that legal costs doubled in the first year after he took over as the union’s counsel.
In 2020 alone, the union spent $620,040 on outside legal costs instead of hiring a much cheaper in-house counsel — nearly doubling the $335,564 spent by the New York NewsGuild in 2019. Even pro-union labor law experts say that kind of union spending on outside legal counsel was excessive for a union local of only 4,200 members.
Payday Report asked Ryan Grim why he had not revealed that his top editor and co-founder of his site, Nausicaa Renner, was married to the UAW Communications Director.
“I don’t think you understand how conflicts of interest work,” said Grim, and that it was “widely known” in the journalism industry.
How would a rank-and-file UAW member reading Grim’s article know this unless the conflict of interest was disclosed directly within the article, a fact that may have influenced his reporting?
Grim claimed that his publication’s founding editor, Renner, wasn’t directly involved in the granular work of editing the final article. However, as the publication’s founding editor, she still allowed it to be published on her site without revealing her husband was the UAW’s Communications Director.
Grim repeatedly refused to answer questions about whether or not he worked with her husband.
Over a period of three weeks, I attempted to engage Grim and set up an interview with him to discuss this. He refused to answer most of my questions. Still, he did threaten to sue me if I got any facts wrong about how the founding editor of his publication was married to the UAW’s Communication Director.
“Do not defame my editor, we’ll take it seriously. If your story is fair and accurate, great, but you’re on notice,” Grim texted me.
Every journalist’s background and family connections shape the way they report, and it’s important that they disclose this information.
For 17 years as a labor reporter, I have always disclosed that my father, Gene Elk, is the retired Director of the Organization of the United Electrical Workers (UE). As a Jewish union leader, he worked to pass the first BDS resolution passed by any union in the country back in 2015
Even when writing for the New York Times about how corruption in previous UAW administrations sunk a union drive at Volkswagen in Chattanooga in 2014, I revealed that my mother had been a UAW activist when she worked at Volkswagen in Western PA in the 1980s.
For 11 years, I traveled back and forth to cover three major UAW attempts at their plant in Chattanooga because, as the son of an autoworker, I knew how important it was for rank-and-file autoworkers to have accurate coverage.
Following the historic union victory, the UAW has had an opportunity to organize non-union plants. Still, since the victory at Chattanooga, the UAW has stumbled, losing a narrow union election at Mercedes in Alabama.
With news of the purges and fear of intimidation within the UAW, one can’t help but wonder if the infighting with the UAW is hurting their ability to take advantage of a historic moment to organize in the South.
As federal monitor Neil Barofsky repeatedly warned, a culture of retaliation within the UAW could hurt the union’s ability to achieve its goals.
“If left unchecked, these issues will inevitably impede the union’s efforts to create a culture of compliance. No matter how strong its architecture of policies and procedures, the union cannot detect and prevent malfeasance, financial or otherwise, if such a sizable portion of its employees fear speaking up when they see it,” wrote Barofsky in July. “Divisions within the Union are also having a negative impact on Union morale and, if left unaddressed, could further drag down the Union’s pace of reform.”
The full 124 page report by the federal monitor can be read here.
