UAW President Under Investigation Over Alleged Retaliation Against Union Leaders

Shawn Fain, the president of the UAW, is under investigation for allegedly retaliating against fellow UAW leadership. In short, it aims to find out if he’s abused his power as the head of the union. For now, at least two main allegations have surfaced. Fain, for his part, appears happy to cooperate but the monitor says the UAW is holding back important documents.

The investigation commenced in February after the UAW secretary claimed to have faced reprisal for declining to authorize certain expenditures for Fain’s office. Subsequently, when Fain removed the union’s Stellantis division head, additional complaints emerged, asserting that this action too was retaliatory. Now, all parties involved are under investigation.

Read: UAW Wants A New Mercedes Election, Says Workers Were Bullied

The federal appointment of a monitor followed a major corruption scandal at the UAW that came to light in 2021. For the time being, the allegations don’t have any smoking gun, but part of that could be the “slow rolling” of requested documents into the monitor’s office.

“The Monitor has attempted for months to garner the Union’s cooperation in gathering the information needed to conduct a full investigation, but the Union has effectively slow-rolled the Monitor’s access to requested documents,” the court filing reads.

Notably, these are just allegations for now. “At this stage, it is important to emphasize that the allegations are just allegations,” the document noted. “They prove nothing in themselves, and nothing in this Report should be construed as reaching any conclusion about possible charges, if any, for suspected misconduct.” The UAW president seems content to continue on his course for now.

“Taking our union in a new direction means sometimes you have to rock the boat, and that upsets people who want to keep the status quo, but our membership expects better and deserves better than the old business as usual,” Fain said in a statement to the Detroit Free Press.

“We encourage the Monitor to investigate whatever claims are brought to their office because we know what they’ll find: a UAW leadership committed to serving the membership and running a democratic union. We’re staying focused on winning record contracts, growing our union, and fighting for economic and social justice on and off the job.”

All of this comes as the union is making waves, and many of them successful, across the country. While it lost an important union vote at a Mercedes plant in Alabama, it won another in Tennessee at a VW facility. Just before the investigation news broke it also won at an Ultium battery production facility as well.