In a significant shakeup, United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain’s chief of staff Chris Brooks has resigned amid allegations that he helped advance false allegations against UAW Secretary Treasurer Margaret Mock that resulted in her being stripped of her duties.

All of Mock’s duties will be restored and the Fain administration will also return UAW Vice President Rich Bolyer to his position as head of the union’s Stellantis Department. Meanwhile, UAW Communications Director Jonah Furman has been demoted and temporarily suspended over reports that he assisted in the scheme targeting Mock.

Both Brooks and Furman are members of the Democratic Socialists of America and former staffers for the Labor Notes publication whom Fain brought into the bureaucracy following their support for his election in 2022. They were given posts with six figure salaries ($211,968 and $175,318 respectively) in the Fain administration to provide the corrupt apparatus with a “reformist” gloss.

Fain had removed Boyer in 2024 over allegations that he “mishandled” negotiations with Stellantis in the supposedly historic 2023 contract. Boyer was used as a scapegoat for the mass firing of temporary workers that immediately followed the deal, which all factions of the union apparatus had supported. The UAW had falsely promised Stellantis temporary workers that they would be promoted to full time positions under the terms of the deal, when in reality Fain and Boyer both knew that over 2,000 would instead be fired.

The departure of Brooks and Furman follows a scathing status report from the court-appointed UAW monitor that documented obstruction by the Fain administration.

Meanwhile, fury is boiling in the plants over the continuing wave of mass layoffs only days before Christmas. Friday was likely the last day of work for 1,140 workers at General Motor’s Factory Zero, located a few miles away from the UAW’s Detroit riverfront headquarters. An additional 1,500 jobs are being cut at Ultium Cells battery plants in Lordstown, Ohio and Spring Hill, Tennessee. The UAW has not even issued a perfunctory statement in opposition, let alone proposed a plan of action to fight back.

Workers are also outraged over Fain’s support for the fascist Trump administration, falsely claiming that trade war will bring jobs back to the United States.

The shakeup in the UAW leadership represents a sharp reversal by the UAW International Executive Board, which had previously stonewalled the UAW monitor’s request to restore duties to Mock and Boyer. It follows new allegations of corruption and cover-up in the UAW at both the International and local union level.

The monitor, Neil Barofsky, alleges Fain and former UAW compliance director Marni Schroeder deleted large numbers of text messages sought by the monitor. Schroeder resigned earlier this year. In his latest status report released earlier this week Barofsky ridiculed lame assertions by Fain that the deletion of at least 123 text messages from his phone related to the removal of Mock was accidental.

“Neither official was able to provide a credible explanation for these deletions, which followed a pattern of selective deletion rather than wholesale removal of conversation threads,” Barofsky wrote. He was able to recover texts from the phones of other UAW officials.

Barofsky stated Brooks and Furman, “conspired to have Mock essentially ousted, and later celebrated their success in removing her from power, comparing it to ‘epically dunk(ing) on another player in basketball.’”

The central role played by Brooks and Furman in concocting allegations against Mock is of particular significance. These two pseudo-left operatives were brought in specifically by Fain to give a facelift to the apparatus as a whole. They specifically rejected the campaign of rank-and-file autoworker Will Lehman, who ran against Fain in 2022 on a platform of abolishing the bureaucracy, rather than reforming it, an impossibility.

They were brought into the union as part of Unite All Workers for Democracy, a union “reform” group created with the support of Labor Notes. They have been key supporters and advisors of Fain. Brooks was responsible for the proposal for the phony “stand up” strike in 2023, which kept UAW members working at the most profitable plants while other workers stood isolated for weeks on the picket line.

Fain has maintained close relations with Labor Notes, appearing at their 2024 convention to make a warmongering speech, declaring workers had to emulate the so-called “Arsenal of Democracy” during World War II.

At the time, Fain was acting as a de-facto member of the Biden administration, being appointed important economic bodies and appearing as an honored guest at the State of the Union and state receptions. Since the election of Trump, he has seamlessly transferred his loyalty to the Trump administration, which the DSA and Labor Notes have relentlessly defended.

Rather than promoting reform and democracy, the report from the monitor demonstrate that Brooks and Furman eagerly collaborated with Fain in corrupt and cynical maneuvers aimed at scapegoating and sidelining potential factional rivals in the UAW bureaucracy.

The latest shakeup at Solidarity House shows a bureaucracy in deep crisis. Barofsky was brought in as monitor in 2021 after a massive corruption scandal brought down much of the union’s top leadership, including two recent presidents. The appointment of a monitor, combined with a shift towards direct election of top union officials, was a maneuver supposed to restore some level of credibility to the apparatus. Instead, it is more hated than ever.

It is possible the sections of the apparatus may be considering Mock or Boyer as potential replacements for the discredited Fain administration in the upcoming 2026 UAW national officers election. However, Mock and Boyer are both creatures of the UAW apparatus who backed the 2023 “stand up” strike and the resulting contract sellout and have no record of principled differences with Fain.

No amount of perfume, however, can cover up the stench emanating from Solidarity House. In recent days further allegations of UAW corruption have emerged. An audit uncovered serious financial improprieties by officers of UAW Local 862 covering workers at Ford Louisville Assembly and Kentucky Truck. It showed that Local 862 officials essentially used the union treasury as a piggy bank for their own personal gain.

The audit found that local officials awarded themselves hefty salary increases, in excess of $100,000, without proper authorization. For example, Local President Todd Dunn saw his pay rise from $58,000 in 2021 to over $114,000 in November 2025. The vice president’s pay rose from around $103,000 in 2021 to over $144,000 in 2024.

It also determined that “Union funds were paid to officers’ or relatives’ businesses without bids, transparency, or required disclosures, violating UAW Administrative Letters and fiduciary standards. This included payments to “family members of some of the company’s top officials were paid for painting, cleaning and other services with no documentation explaining the details of the work performed and no approving votes for that work in place.”

In addition, pre-signed checks were kept in a safe in violation of union rules. Physical signatures were missing from overtime approvals and hundreds of expense vouchers lacked receipts or documentation despite the warnings of auditors.

Local 862 is one of the most largest and most important locals in the union, with upwards to 14,000 active members. The Kentucky Truck Plant is one of the largest auto plants in the country and manufactures Ford Super Duty pickup trucks and the Lincoln Navigator and Ford Expedition SUVs. To date Local 862 President Todd Dunn has not commented on the audit report.

Will Lehman, a rank-and-file worker at Mack Trucks in Macungie, Pennsylvania and a leader of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and- File Committees issued the following statement in response to the latest UAW leadership shakeup:

The corruption scandal has exposed what many on the shop floor already knew. The UAW apparatus has become a privileged managerial layer that protects corporate profitability and its own material interests rather than the working class.

The recent reinstatement of Mock and Boyer is not going to fix that rot. Decades of corporatist practices justifying board seats, joint training centers, secret deals and the substitution of “management rights” for workers’ democracy produced the conditions for bribery, cover-ups and the suppression of shop-floor resistance.

The union bureaucracy is not a vehicle for workers’ demands. It is opposed to militant rank-and-file action. The practical lesson is to stop placing hope in reforms that merely rotate one layer of career officials for another and instead recognize that the real leverage resides in organized workers on the job who take control of production and safety.

The reality we confront on the shop floor points to the need for democratically run, recallable rank-and-file committees in every plant to decide demands, coordinate tactics and refuse secret bargaining. We need to start organizing based on what we as workers need (jobs, safety, wages, no layoffs) rather than management’s “rights.” We need to consider management rights with as little regard as they consider our rights as workers.

We must refuse to be pitted against co-workers in other plants or countries by the nationalist UAW apparatus. We must coordinate across borders by building the IWA–RFC to block whipsawing and share leverage.

If you want concrete assistance in organizing and linking with a wider political strategy, consider contacting the Socialist Equality Party and the growing rank-and-file movement to discuss forming factory committees and building an international, socialist alternative, contact us.”