In the past week, many in the labor movement have been baffled by the UAW's support for Trump tariffs. Both the Machinists and Steelworkers opposed the tariffs, and Canadian union leaders denounced UAW President Shawn Fain for selling out international solidarity.
The Trump Administration has repeatedly cited the UAW's support for the tariffs in justifying them, but UAW members are already beginning to suffer adversely from the tariffs.
More than 900 Stellantis workers who supplied parts to Canada have already been laid off. Analysts predict that the tariffs will result in a decline in UAW profit-sharing checks.
This behavior is unusual, and some have speculated that Fain is doing a favor for Trump on the tariffs because Fain is eager for the federal government to let the union's federal monitorship expire in 2026, which costs the UAW millions of dollars a year. The federal monitorship has also become a giant headache for Fain as it investigates his decision to demote his former running mate, Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock.
Within the UAW's rank-and-file, there is much confusion over how the UAW came to support the tariffs and the decision to demote Mock. Part of the reason is that, despite pledges to be more democratic, very little is known about the decision-making process of the upper echelons of the UAW.
For more than two years, Frank Goedekke, a retired GM worker from UAW Local 653, has asked the UAW to fulfill its constitutional duty by releasing the meeting minutes of the UAW's International Executive Board (IEB).
In 1947, as a young Vice President of the UAW, Walter Reuther passed Article 12, Section 19 of the union's constitution, which allows every member to read the meeting minutes of the union's executive board by visiting their Regional UAW Director's office. The UAW requires a court reporter to type the minutes verbatim to ensure their accuracy, and after correcting typos, it typically releases the meeting minutes within two months.
"This tradition goes way back to the 40s, when Walter Reuther asked to put it in the convention, they voted on it," Goedekke said in an interview with Payday Report. "And his thinking was, well, if members can see what goes on at the executive board meetings, they will know who to vote for. And sure enough, at the next election, you know, he consolidated his power, and the rest is history."
However, during Shawn Fain's entire two-year tenure as President of the UAW, the meeting minutes of the UAW International Executive Board (IEB) have not been released once.
Brooks Reverses on Releasing UAW Executive Board Minutes
In 2019, Labor Notes staffer Chris Brooks, a member of the UAW's then-affiliate, the National Writers Union, filed a request to obtain meeting minutes related to an embezzlement scandal that saw two past UAW presidents and nearly a dozen top union officers wind up in jail.
Brooks then published an article at In These Times magazine using those meeting minutes in April 2020.
The article created a furor among UAW members as it showed that UAW President Gary Jones, who would later go to prison, strong-armed the union's executive board into choosing his handpicked successor, Rory Gamble, as interim UAW president. The meeting minutes also showed that he pushed the union's executive board to put him on paid leave as he faced federal embezzlement charges.
"I was kind of shocked at the way they voted to give Gary Jones a paid leave of absence, rather than, like, kicking them out," says Goeddeke. "I have spoken to many members who were upset about what they read in that article and it was a significant factor, I believe, in Shawn Fain and others winning control of the IEB in the last election."
Brook's article catapulted him to a leadership position within the Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD) caucus. Now, Brooks is serving as Shawn Fain's Chief of Staff.
Ironically, Brooks, who came to power with Fain claiming to be a union democracy supporter, has blocked the release of the minutes of UAW meetings despite repeated requests. His refusal to release the minutes comes as a major scandal has engulfed the UAW.
Currently, the UAW's court-appointed federal monitor, Neil Barofsky, is investigating the decision of the UAW International Executive Board to demote UAW Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock in February 2024.
Just two years earlier, Fain, a white 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 an issue 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 136,485 votes from the UAW's rank-and-file.
Many UAW members have been wondering why Mock was demoted. Fain and his allies have claimed that Mock engaged in financial impropriety. At the same time, Mock says she was removed because she began asking tough questions about UAW spending priorities before being removed.
"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."
To reassure union members, Fain's caucus, Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), which backed Mock for election as Secretary-Treasurer in 2023, countered in a Facebook post that members who doubt the accusations against Mock should request the full minutes of the UAW's International Executive Board meeting last week.
However, the UAW will not release the IEB meeting minutes, denying union members the ability to read the very meeting minutes that USED supporters have cited as evidence of Mock's financial impropriety.
(For more on the scandal, check out Payday's 6,000-word investigation "UAW Federal Monitor Investigates Fain's Purge of Top Allies While Convicted Felon Steers UAW Legal.")
UAW federal monitor Neil Barofsky, who won praise for his role as a progressive watchdog as the Special Inspector General of the bank bailout under Obama, has begun investigating the demotion of Mock.
However, Fain's allies have claimed that Barofsky has a hidden agenda. They say that Barofsky, who is Jewish, is a "secret Zionist," opposed UAW's position on Palestine, citing as justification a legal threat from the ADL that Barofsky simply forwarded to the appropriate parties at the UAW; thus fulfilling his legal obligation as monitor to pass on legal threats to the union.
Barofsky has denied both publicly and privately that he is a Zionist. Still, the claims have stuck, impeding the credibility of the monitor to oversee union democracy and transparency reforms within the union.
The claims are also based heavily on an article written by former Intercept reporter Ryan Grim, who recently launched his own publication, Drop Site News, which painted Barofsky as a secret Zionist based on reporting based on anonymous sources.
However, nowhere in Ryan Grim's reporting on UAW's federal monitor did he disclose that his managing editor and co-founder of Drop Site News, Nausicaa Renner, is married to the UAW Communications Director, Jonah Furman.
Grim claimed in his reporting that Barofsky made Zionist statements in a UAW International Executive Board meeting, claims which Barofsky has vehemently denied.
However, the UAW refuses to release the IEB meeting minutes, which would prove whether or not Barofsky actually made Zionist statements. Goeddeke, who is a member of Fain's caucus, Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD). said that the UAW's refusal to release these minutes has made him suspicious.
"I'd heard some rumors about what was going on at the executive board that were kind of discerning to me like the way Margaret Mock was stripped of several of her responsibilities," said Goeddeke. "It just seemed like I just smelled a rat there."
Fain Refuses to Release Executive Board Meeting Minutes in Last Two Years
The UAW is supposed to take transcripts prepared by a sworn court reporter and release them within two months, but in the two years of Fain's presidency, they have never once released the executive board minutes. After the scandal with Mock broke, Goeddeke started pursuing the release of the meeting minutes more vigorously within the UAW.
In a February email to Goddekke, obtained by Payday Report, Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock said that the meeting minutes were awaiting approval from UAW Chief of Staff Chris Brooks and the legal department.
"Most recently, Bill Parker and my secretary met with Chief of Staff Chris Brooks and General Council Bill Karges to establish a better process for the production of the materials you are asking about," wrote Mock to Goeddekke. "Currently, meeting transcripts have been prepared by my office and reviewed by the Legal Department but await approval from the President's office. I will continue to try and work with the President's office on these and other matters."
Two months later, the meeting minutes have still not been produced, and Goeddeke has been stonewalled in further attempts to get the union to release the executive board minutes.
"They have basically been sitting in the president's office for the last two years," says Goeddeke. "UAW members have a right to know what's going on in their union."
