Yesterday, Payday Report broke the news that UAW Chief of Staff Chris Brooks had been forced to resign amid allegations that he led efforts to illegally retaliate against dissident union leaders.
To resolve legal charges from the illegal purge of dissident union leaders, UAW President Shawn Fain reinstated Rich Boyer as UAW Vice President for Stellantist and returned supervision of 11 UAW departments to UAW Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock, both of whom were demoted and illegally stripped of their responsibilities for speaking out against Fain’s leadership team.
To resolve legal charges for lying to a federal monitor and hiding messages, UAW Chief of Staff Chris Brooks was forced to resign; former UAW Communications Director Jonah Furman was suspended and demoted; and, earlier, UAW Compliance Director Marni Schroeder resigned in September after being presented with evidence of wrongdoing.
At a time when the UAW has struggled in its organizing attempts, the massive expenditure of legal resources to defend Fain’s purge of union dissidents raises serious questions about the allocation of union resources. The report also raises troubling questions about how Fain and Brooks lied to federal investigators.
According to the federal monitor report released today, Fain deleted at least 123 text messages directly related to the purges. UAW Compliance Director Marni Schroeder, who was supposed to be an independent watchdog, deleted all of her text messages over a four-month period. The report also found that Chris Brooks repeatedly lied to the federal monitor when asked about his activities.
The recent revelations raise troubling questions about the UAW’s commitment to reform. They also dramatically increased the likelihood that UAW President Shawn Fain will face a serious re-election challenge when he runs for office next year in a membership-wide vote.
Show Trials & Deleted Text Messages
In 2020, the UAW entered into a federal consent decree when more than a dozen top UAW officers, including two former UAW presidents, Dennis Williams and Gary Jones, were convicted of embezzling from the union and taking bribes from employers.
To settle federal charges, the UAW agreed to a consent decree that included reforms to be overseen by federal Judge David Lawson, a former union-side labor lawyer appointed to the bench by President Bill Clinton in 2000. Lawson appointed Neil Barofsky as the federal monitor overseeing the consent decree and providing status updates to the court. Barofsky is a progressive watchdog who won accolades for taking on Wall Street and the Obama Administration during the bailout.
As part of the consent decree, the UAW agreed to require all major contracts issued by the union to go through an open-bid process, in which at least three contractors must bid on a contract before it is approved. For years, union members had complained that the lack of an open-bid process had led to them being ripped off, as UAW officers awarded contracts to their political cronies, not based on merit.
As Secretary-Treasurer, Margaret Mock repeatedly fought with UAW President Shawn Fain as he attempted to side-step the open-bid reforms and reward his political cronies.
In December of 2023, she angered UAW Communications Director Jonah Furman by refusing to award a $500,000 no-bid contract to a politically connected DC consulting firm for billboards and media buys to support union organizing at Volkswagen in Chattanooga.
Given that the no-bid contract was for $500,000, a large expenditure for any union, Mock denied the request until more dialogue within the union could be had about whether the expenditure should be approved.
Union organizers debated whether spending $500,000 was an effective use of organizing resources, especially given that the no-bid contract was awarded to a media firm, Conexión, with little experience in union organizing. The firm was founded by Adrian Saenz, who served as the White House’s Director of Public Engagement under President Biden, and was staffed primarily by DC-based Democratic Party officials.
Furman also grew frustrated with Mock after she refused to approve a no-bid contract for Feldman Strategies, a communication firm founded by DC political operative Andrew Feldman. The federal consent decree was very clear that the union should solicit at least three bids before approving any contract, unless the union found a reason to grant a special exception.
Eventually, after a six-week debate within the union, both no-bid contracts were approved in February.
In February of 2024, UAW President Shawn Fain led an effort to remove Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock from her duties overseeing 11 different departments within the UAW. To justify Mock’s demotion, then-UAW Compliance Director Maria Schroeder prepared a report accusing Mock of politicizing the expenditure approval process. The report from Schroeder persuaded the UAW International Executive Board to vote to demote Mock.
However, the federal monitor found that the report contained multiple fabrications. Mock was not even informed of the charges against her before being called into the executive board.
The report completely blindsided her, “who had received no advance notice that these allegations were to be levied against her at the IEB meeting and was not given an opportunity to participate in the investigation into her that resulted in the Report,” wrote UAW federal monitor Neil Barofsky.
Schroeder claimed that her report, which was used to justify Mock’s demotion, was entirely independent with no input from UAW President Shawn Fain or his top staff. However, an investigation by the federal monitor Neil Barofsky found that hundreds of text messages between top UAW staffers had been deleted and that UAW Chief of Staff Chris Brooks had lied to the federal monitor, a serious illegal offense.
In an attempt to hide their work from the union’s membership, the federal monitor accused UAW President Shawn Fain of deleting at least 123 text messages from his phone during the period when the union was orchestrating the demotion of Margaret Mock.
Even more shocking, all text messages on UAW Compliance Director Marin Schroeder's phone were deleted from the period between November 25, 2023 to March 23, 2024, when the plan to remove Mock was hatched.
According to the monitor’s report, neither Schroeder nor Fain could explain why so many of their text messages had been deleted. At one point, Fain told the federal monitor that someone might have broken into his office and deleted the messages.
Celebrating Too Soon?
However, not all UAW staffers deleted their messages. UAW Chief of Staff Chris Brooks and former UAW Communications Director Jonah Furman continued congratulating one another in writing for secretly orchestrating the illegal demotion of Mock.
According to the monitor’s report released today, “text messages between Brooks and Communications Director Jonah Furman showing that they (a) had editorial control over the Special Compliance Report, (b) used that control to insert false and inflammatory allegations against Mock that Fain later used to justify the retaliation against her.”
After their plan to demote Mock was successfully executed in February, Brooks texted Furman to brag about it, according to the federal monitor’s report released today.
“Can I just take a moment and say: my strategy was flawless this week. Like everything went perfectly to plan,” texted Brooks. “It feels really good. Like how [I] imagine it feels to epically dunk on another player in basketball.”
Chris Brooks may have celebrated too early.
On Thursday, UAW President Shawn Fain wrote to members to inform them that Brooks had been removed as the UAW’s Chief of Staff and that Furman had been suspended without pay and demoted from his role as Communications Director of the union.
"It is also crucial that we build an internal culture of accountability, fairness, transparency, and collaboration," Fain wrote. "Our union is committed to building a culture of compliance, where staff can speak freely without any fear of retaliation."
However, Fain’s rhetoric may not be enough for him to win re-election in an open membership vote in 2026.
"This is not transparency. This is not reform," GM Flint Assembly line David Pillsbury told the Detroit News. "Threats, retaliation and intimidation — that's what [former UAW presidents] Dennis Williams and Gary Jones were doing."
Photo credit: (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call)
