A funny thing happened after UAW President Shawn Fain promised to redeem his union from its legacy of corruption. Following his fall 2022 election, Fain pushed to dissolve the UAW’s reform caucus and got his wish. The union’s federal monitor, Neil Barofsky, released reports that detail Fain’s culture of retaliation and how Fain ousted two officers who refused to approve his ambiguous spending requests. Well, that combative streak is turning convention season into a bit of a soap opera.
Those two ousted officers, who Barofsky ordered to be reinstated, are running for office this fall. Fain allegedly removed one of them, Vice President Rich Boyer, from his Stellantis oversight duties because Boyer “refus[ed] to divert benefits to his fiancée” and her sister. We’ll briefly talk about the other officer, Margaret Mock, in a moment, but what matters most right now is that Boyer is running against Fain for the presidency.
Fain, a career union bureaucrat who now presides over “Solidarity House,” is still a relatively popular union president and never misses a chance to self-promote, but Boyer’s candidacy is still a big deal within the union. Detroit publications have acknowledged him as the most “prominent” rival, and one who has been engaging in “an enduring feud with Fain.”
That’s not even the start of it.
Who is Rich Boyer?
Boyer joined UAW in 1985 as a worker in Chrysler’s Toledo Jeep plant. He climbed the local officer ladder, later graduated to the skilled trades committeeperson role, and was elected international VP in 2022. He’s the only candidate who currently sits on the union’s leadership council, the 14-member International Executive Board (IEB).
Last year, Boyer called out Fain’s decision to seize oversight of the Stellantis department. At that time, he lamented of Fain, “He ain’t no leader… If you want to know the truth … It breaks my heart bad.”
Boyer also revealed that Fain generally ignores him after the firing-rehiring scandal: “I don’t talk to him. If I call him, he may call back two weeks later. He doesn’t answer my phone calls. He doesn’t – nothing.” Boyer claims that Fain previously told him “to fire [five] members of my staff, and I wouldn’t do it, and I knew he was gonna come after me. I stood my ground, because them people did nothing wrong.”
If reelected, Boyer wants to bring accountability to UAW finances and vows to lower member dues. At last week’s convention, delegates voted to keep those dues at 2.5 hours per month to build the strike fund up to $1.3 billion from its current $850 million. Boyer, however, wants to answer members’ call to only pay 2 hours per month in dues.
Boyer has hinted that the strike fund isn’t being used purely to prepare for strikes. “My opinion is they’re taking that money out of the strike fund to run the day-to-day operations,” Boyer alleged. “Our budget isn’t right.” He added, “I think if I win, I’ll change the mindset and the direction of the IEB. Right now, everybody’s in survival mode.”
Also on the presidential ballot: Will Lehmen, Brian Keller, Tricia Geiger, and Greg Mooney.
Where is Margaret Mock?
Mock was rumored to be considering a run at the presidency, too. That would have been an interesting follow-up after Fain not only pushed her out, but as the federal monitor wrote, Fain “believed having Black women present the motion against Mock, who is also Black, would shield him from potential accusations of racism.” Fain later admitted to Barofsky, “I thought it would be better coming from [them] than me, a white guy.”
Mock, however, has chosen to seek reelection as secretary-treasurer and has two challengers, Roc Ciers and Brandon Campbell.
Will Fain have another term of eating the rich?
He’s banking on it. Fain has been talking up his plans for a general strike on May 1, 2028, which coincides with the expiration date of many union contracts throughout multiple sectors. Fain also regularly trumpets his “wins,” like the recent American Axle/Dauch Corp. contract that brought a return to pre-2008 wages, long after the UAW agreed to have workers’ wages cut in half due to the financial damage from a previous UAW strike.
Yet it’s not easy to remove a union president who hasn’t been charged with federal crimes. From here, mail ballots will go out in late August, and tabulation will begin in early October. This is only the second time that the union has directly elected international officers under a “one member, one vote” policy, which was put into place as part of the federal monitor deal.
