One of the reasons I campaigned for and voted for Fain for President is that I was hoping for more transparency. As I write this in February 2026, I am very disappointed. Overall, I believe the lack of transparency from the Fain administration is very poor and reflects the contempt he has for the membership.
First the good.
The Stand-Up Strike in the Fall of 2023.
It was great that President Fain had his Facebook Live broadcasts to the membership. This was the first time I remember a UAW President ever speaking directly to the members in the mass media like this during bargaining. It was like the Japanese people listening to Emperor Hirohito’s voice for the first time! I believe these Facebook Live sessions helped members feel more engaged, and also helped turn the public on our side. No question, it was a good thing.
But at the same time, the bargaining updates were pretty sparse on details and the status of specific bargaining issues. There just wasn’t much actionable information passed along to members. I remember watching some of them and thinking that this is great public relations but I am not learning much about what is really going on. And further, although it was good for Big 3 workers, in a way it kind of alienated non-Big 3 workers, because Fain doesn’t do Facebook Lives for their bargaining.
It was also good the UAW posted the whitebooks, or tentative agreements, online during the ratification process. But not all members at all locals had time to look at these before ratification voting. And it did not include all the memos and supplements and such that go along with it. The devil is in the details, as many members have found out the hard way since then!
It is also good the UAW posted the supplements to the agreements online. I remember years ago trying to get copies of these at my local and couldn’t get them. But again, why post these for Big 3 workers but not everyone else? How does that make you feel if you are a member in a non-Big 3 unit?
That is about the end of the discussion about good transparency under Fain.
Now the bad.
Financial Reports to Members.
Traditionally, the UAW has reported the International’s annual financial reports to members in Solidarity Magazine, which is now available online on the UAW’s website. But no financial reports to members were made for 2022 and 2023 in Solidarity Magazine. Finally, the 2024 report was put into the Fall 2025 issue.
Of course, one could argue it is the Secretary-Treasurer’s responsibility to report finances to members, although I was unable to find this in the Constitution. But the President has control of the communications department, which handles Solidarity Magazine. There is no reason the members shouldn’t have the 2022 and 2023 financial reports in Solidarity Magazine.
Unrealized Appreciation on Investments
I was given access, as one of my Local’s Trustees, to LUIS in 2022. I was able to log in and download a recent International Trustee’s Report. In this report, the first time I read it, I couldn’t believe it. The UAW had about $340 million in unrealized appreciation on investments in the Strike Trust that it was not reporting to members in the annual financial reports in Solidarity Magazine. Over the time since, I have discussed this at length with many members. One of those discussions led indirectly to an article in The Intercept magazine, while Shawn Fain was still just a candidate, where he is quoted:
“This is just another example of an out of touch International Executive Board that places its own agenda above that of the membership,” Shawn Fain, the Members United candidate for president, told The Intercept in response to information in the internal audit. “While the Curry Administration claims to be transparent, I find it shameful that the membership has been misled as to the actual value of the strike fund, and that our leadership has severely underreported that value.”
—Just How Much is the UAW Strike Fund Worth? The Intercept, November 16, 2022
The UAW uses a modified cash accounting system, and is not required to follow Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). And the value of this unrealized appreciation does change from day to day. But still, I believe this is important to report financial assets of this magnitude to members when the IEB is able to cash in or churn investments to get an infusion to the general fund for operations. And further, depending on your interpretation, it might distort the real value of the Strike Fund (and when the $850 million threshold is reached to trigger lower dues). And apparently, as the quote above attests, Candidate Fain believed this was important too. But President Fain apparently does not, because this is still not being reported to members.
International Trustee Reports
Article 51, Section 1 of our Constitution requires the International Trustees to report semi-annual audits to Local Unions “as soon as completed.” The way this has been done in recent years is through the LUIS computer system. I asked about two weeks ago, and it turns out the last Int’l Trustee Report available on LUIS is from June 2022. That is 3-1/2 years ago! Who has responsibility for the LUIS system? The President’s Office.
Overdue International Executive Board Meeting Minutes
Our Constitution, Article 12, Section 19, requires the IEB to make available “verbatim minutes” of all IEB meetings to members. Further, summaries of the IEB meetings are to be made available to locals (via LUIS). The Public Review Board, in my previous case #1866, requires these to be made available no later than two weeks prior to the next IEB meeting.
As of mid-February 2026, the latest IEB meeting minutes available to members is May 2025. I should be able to inspect the August and November 2025 meeting minutes, but these are not available to me. When I asked why I can’t see them, I was told they are done and in the President’s Office waiting for approval. But these delays with the Fain administration are not new.
So here is a timeline (the timeline after my PRB Case #1866 was settled in July 2023) of my saga to inspect these minutes. This timeline includes the complaint I filed in January 2025 when the IEB was 566 days overdue with producing IEB meeting minutes and summaries (Fain had been sworn in as President 662 days at this point):
After my PRB ruling (summer 2023), I laid low for a while, I figured I’d let the youngsters learn the ropes of IEB meeting minutes.
3/3/24 I made an ethics complaint about other members not getting timely IEB meeting summaries and minutes
4/25/24 The Ethics Office responsed.
7/13/24 I made a complaint to the Monitor
7/19/24 Another ethics complaint about it!
7/23/24 I asked Ethics to tell me what the process is for IEB meeting minutes (so I knew where to place blame). Their response, clear as mud.
9/3/24 I filed my own request to inspect IEB meeting minutes
I went in to Region 1 on Wednesday afternoons and inspected IEB meeting minutes. I was given access to the following dates:
Feb 21, 2023
Feb 22, 2023
Feb 23, 2023
Mar 15, 2023
Mar 20, 2023
May 8, 2023
Jun 6, 2023
Jun 7, 2023
Jun 8, 2023
Jun 30, 2023
Then the stream dried up in late October 2024.
11/22/24 I sent a new request to the Secretary-Treasurer.
1/16/25 I was running out of patience and filed another complaint/appeal to IEB, that the latest IEB meeting minutes I was able to inspect was 566 days prior. Please note that Fain had been sworn in as President 662 days at this point.
2/10/25 Fain responded to my complaint, instructing the Secretary-Treasurer to investigate (the IEB meeting minutes I asked for had already been through the Secretary-Treasurer’s Office and were sitting in the President’s Office when he wrote this).
3/21/25 Secretary-Treasurer Mock’s response.
5/9/2025 Was finally informed by the Secretary-Treasurer’s Office that more IEB meeting minutes are available for me to inspect. Yeah!
I spent most of the summer going in one day per week to inspect IEB meeting minutes and other related documents:
Feb 20, 2024
Feb 21, 2024
Nov 13, 2024
Aug 10, 2023
Oct 17, 2023
Sep 14, 2023
Feb 14, 1996
Feb 10, 2025
Feb 20, 2025
Feb 18, 2025
Feb 19, 2025
Nov 28, 2023
Nov 29, 2023
Nov 30, 2023
May 1, 2024
7/10/2025 As I was inspecting these IEB meeting minutes, I noticed a few problems (noted in below section), and filed another complaint to the Public Review Board, which I amended and then amended again. As of now (2/12/2026, the President’s Office still has not forwarded my complaint to the Public Review Board).
11/10/2025 Asked for August 2025 IEB meeting minutes, and was told they aren’t available.
2/12/2026 The August and November 2025 minutes are still not available. Nor are IEB meeting summaries or Int’l Trustee Reports since June 2022.
International Executive Board Meeting Minutes – Off Record
So there are other problems with the IEB meeting minutes besides the undefensible delays.
Constitutionally (Article 12, Section 19), the IEB can go off-record during meetings if 7/8 of the members present vote to go off-record. But still, the PRB has ruled in my previous case (#1866) that they must “…indicate the topic(s) addressed during any off-the-record discussion”. But the IEB meeting minutes since Fain was sworn in include many redactions, without indicating what they are redacting. What are they redacting and why? Some of the stuff they redact is probably OK, even though the constitution doesn’t allow it. For example, details about the IT system (security concerns), the name of a job applicant, etc. But some of it is not. For example, redacting President Fain’s many potty-mouth comments is probably not ok.
Even when the IEB does go off-record, they aren’t supposed to “take action” (UAW Constitution, Article 12, section 19). But the IEB has been taking action outside of IEB meetings. For example, the decision was made in August 2023 to cash in hundreds of millions of dollars in investments outside of meetings via email. No wonder there was confusion about what they were voting on and it’s implications. So now the UAW is missing $80 million dollars, the Monitor is investigating, and so is the US House of Representatives.
In every regular IEB meeting, there is a legal report. It isn’t uncommon for the IEB to go off-record during these reports. But under Fain, the IEB goes off-record for the entire legal report. In the past, only part of the legal reports would typically be off-record. For example, since the feds starting investigating the UAW in mid-2010’s, the legal report would start with a summary of when the investigations started, etc. Then they would go off-record when they started discussing specific details. The way it is now, members have no idea what legal challenges the UAW faces. I don’t think that is good at all.
UAW Convention Proceedings
The UAW had its Constitutional Convention in June 2022. the Special Bargaining Convention was in March 2023. Yet the proceedings were not available until the summer of 2025. These are posted as pdf’s on the UAW’s website. These are simply the court reporter’s transcripts, they did not require any editing. If President Fain believed transparency to members is important, these wouldn’t have taken so long.