{"id":420,"date":"2026-07-14T21:11:55","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T21:11:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/frontierhousingreport.com\/?p=420"},"modified":"2026-07-14T21:11:55","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T21:11:55","slug":"monitor-amok","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/frontierhousingreport.com\/?p=420","title":{"rendered":"Monitor Amok!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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There\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2014until today.<\/p>\n

Read more Organized Money: The Supreme Court Gives Wall Street Its Own Regulator<\/a><\/p>\n

More from Harold Meyerson<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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\u2019s campaign to unseat UAW President Shawn Fain in the union\u2019s 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\u2019s leaders would be chosen by member elections rather than at conventions, and that its books would be open to inspection to ensure there\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n

No such misdeeds have reoccurred, but Barofsky has plunged himself into internal UAW politics despite that. As I chronicled in an article that ran in our April issue this year, Barofsky\u2019s involvement in the union\u2019s politics began in December of 2023, when the union\u2019s executive board, at President Fain\u2019s 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\u2019t calling in his official capacity. The two had words, and Fain\u2019s 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\u2019s executive board about what the ADL claimed was the antisemitism of a UAW local. At the board\u2019s February 2024 meeting, members asked why Barofsky was involving himself in the union\u2019s politics, while Barofsky protested he was not really seeking a policy change from them. Infuriated by both Barofsky\u2019s charges and his denials, Fain said, \u201cFor anybody to ever fucking say I\u2019m antisemitic, brother, I\u2019ll fight your ass in front of this building in a heartbeat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Within weeks of that meeting, Barofsky initiated an investigation of Fain\u2019s 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\u2019s constitution grants its president). Fain and Mock were both members of a union reform slate that had swept into power in the UAW\u2019s 2022 election, but the clash between Fain\u2019s break-things-to-win-victories staff and Mock\u2019s by-the-book staff had been fierce. Fain had also stripped union Vice President Boyer of his control of the UAW\u2019s Stellantis (formerly Chrysler) division.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s clashes with Mock. Fain then agreed to restore the assignments to Mock and Boyer, and Fain\u2019s chief aide, Chris Brooks, agreed to leave the union lest Barofsky ask Donald Trump\u2019s Department of Justice to investigate both Fain and the union.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s fianc\u00e9e, and to Boyer\u2019s refusal to help Fain\u2019s fianc\u00e9e\u2019s sister win workers\u2019 comp due to an injury she suffered at a Stellantis plant. The report details at length Fain\u2019s interchanges with the company when it refused the fianc\u00e9e\u2019s sister\u2019s workers\u2019 comp claim, as well as his urging Boyer, as head of the Stellantis division, to help if he could. Barofsky\u2019s report also includes the reasons Fain gave for his removing Boyer\u2019s Stellantis responsibilities, most of which the report disputes.<\/p>\n

Read more Silicon Valley Needs Washington After All<\/a><\/p>\n

The most telling aspect of the report isn\u2019t really its conclusions; it\u2019s 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\u2019s side of the story. Since then, Trump\u2019s Justice Department has begun an investigation of Fain for the allegations that Barofsky has leveled against him: providing a bonus to workers at a training center that employed his fianc\u00e9e, and trying to help his fianc\u00e9e\u2019s sister get workers\u2019 comp.<\/p>\n

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\u2019 ancien r\u00e9gime<\/em>) is not immediately apparent. Then again, Trump\u2019s 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\u2019s DOJ.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s presidency\u2014particularly inasmuch as the UAW constitution explicitly states that only UAW members and retirees in good standing may contribute anything of value to any candidate\u2019s campaign for a UAW leadership position.<\/p>\n

Does that put Neil Barofsky in violation of the very constitution he\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Read more Trump\u2019s Plan to Corrupt American Science<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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