Does the UAW have too many Chiefs and not enough worker bees? This is a question or rumor going around for a while. Let’s look at some data and try to figure this out.
First of all, going back to Rory Gamble’s presidency, the International was offering early retirements to representatives and hiring more people. Also, keep in mind there was hiring because of the joint training centers dissolving and changing their structure so that they used International Representatives instead of their own joint employees. So some of these joint training center employees got hired by the UAW, and now the new training centers reimburse the International for these people. So there was a lot going on and I don’t have a lot of specific data to sort that part of it out.
I read the IEB meeting minutes of November 28, 2023. During discussion about adding staff, President Fain complained that Ray Curry put on 48 staff people during the run-off election for President (page 190). I don’t know where he got the 48 number from, and I don’t know if it is net of retirement replacements or joint training center folks. I believe President Fain was arguing in this discussion that in the past, incoming Presidents got to put their people in so he should be able to put his people in, too. This is common practice for a new leader in practically any organization to be able to put at least a few of his/her own top people in to enact his/her agenda. At the same time, it is also considered common practice for an outgoing leader to hold off on hiring people to allow the new leader more flexibility.
I was challenged by someone about this number 48 that President Fain cited. So I got LM2 data for 2022 and 2023. The runoff election, I’ll say began the day after the regular election ballots were due on November 28, 2022, and ended on March 26, 2023 when President Fain was sworn in. Article 11, Section 8 of the Constitution specifies that new International Reps hire in at $103,338.39 annually. If someone started as an International Representative after November 28, 2022, their (one-month) salary would be lower than $103,338.39รท12 = $8,611.53. I don’t see anyone in the 2022 LM2 data that are lower than that, or close. In the 2023 data, if someone hired in at the Int’l Rep rate before March 26, they would end up with a salary > $79,491.07 (20 payroll periods remaining in 2023). I see 41 such employees. And people in higher salary grades, I don’t know exactly what their cutoff point would be for this analysis. But I know that at least 5 of these 41 were with the opposition candidates that won the election. Based on these data, I believe Shawn was engaging in a bit of puffery in his argument, although it does appear that Ray Curry was stuffing the employee rolls, too.
So to take this further, I checked the LM2’s for the numbers of employees who were in one year but not the previous year. I’ll call these “hires”. And those that are in one year but not the following year, I’ll call “retirements”.
| Year | Retirements/Quits/Expires | Hires |
| 2021 | 39 | 70 |
| 2022 | 47 | 72 |
| 2023 | 114 | 166 (including 36 committee members who are unique to 2023) |
| 2024 | 248 (including 140 temporary organizers not previously included as employees in LM2) |
Also, in this same meeting, President Fain was reporting that during the Stand-Up Strike, the UAW was effective in part because he was able to work departments together in a way that the UAW had not done previously. I am not sure the nuts and bolts of how this was done, but it likely did involve some more administrative effort.
According to the IEB meeting minutes of June 6, 2023, the all-in costs, including benefits, for 4.74 representatives on staff costs about $1M per year (approximately $211,000 per rep). That was before the staff council got a new contract with a significant raise. So it is likely somewhere around 4.5 representatives per $1M now. Of course, higher positions are going to cost more, too.
We have data from the Department of Labor LM2 reports that the UAW files every year. These data include for each employee of the union, their job title and gross salary. I downloaded these data for 2020 through 2024, and did some magic in Excel and Access. What I ended up with was a listing of each job title, with the number of employees in each job title, for each year. I also included the gross salaries.
These data should be interpreted with caution. If someone was an Administrative Assistant, and got promoted to Top Administrative Assistant mid-year, they would show up in the Top Administrative Assistant category, but not Administrative Assistant. Their salary would probably be a bit lower than the other Top Administrative Assistants.
The bigger problem in interpretation is if someone retires and is replaced in the same year. This will show both people, the recent retiree and the replacement, in the job title that year. It will also show both of their salaries in gross salary. So this skews the gross salary data if someone retires toward the end of the year and someone else is promoted from within to fill their position. It is less of a problem with gross salary if someone is hired from the outside to fill their position. It is also problematic if there is a long gap in filling a position, or if there is significant overlap to train someone before retiring. But still, these shouldn’t be significant problems when you get, like, over a dozen or so people in a job classification, and over multiple years. The bigger thing to look at is trends over time.
Of course, if someone changes their name that might also complicate things, but I don’t believe it is a problem in these data.
When interpreting 2024 numbers, keep in mind we don’t know (with this data source until the 2025 LM2 comes out in March 2026) who retires in 2024. So the 2024 numbers might be inflated by the 2024 retirees who were also replaced in 2024.
Chief of Staff is the highest employee position in the union. There is one person in this position who reports to the President.
The Top Administrative Assistant, or Top AA, is the next highest classification. There were 7 of these in 2020, 12 in 2021, 13 in 2022, 20 in 2023, and 18 in 2024. So yeah, we see a 50% increase in this 2nd highest classification in President Fain’s tenure, so far.
The Secretary-Treasurer has one top employee, an Executive Administrative Assistant, who is similar to a Top AA. This position has remained at one employee from 2020-2024. In 2024 there were two shown, because one of them, Todd Brien, retired and was replaced. So they both show up in the data.
Administrative Assistant, or AA, is the third-highest employee classification within the UAW. In 2020 there were 35 of these, growing steadily to 53 in 2024. This is a 51% increase from 2020 through 2024.
Assistant – Major, is the lowest level of management within the UAW. These are people that are department heads and such. These are at-will positions and not in the staff council bargaining unit. In 2020 there were 51 of these, increasing to 76 in 2024, a 49% increase.
Assistant – Minor is the highest level within the staff bargaining unit. These are like coordinators. There were 29 of these in 2020 and the number decreased to 19 in 2024. This is a 35% decrease.
The worker bees are the Servicing Representatives. These are the folks who do most of the work with members and locals. In 2020, there were 253 of these, and in 2024, 294 of them. That is about a 15% increase over those years. I am not sure how many of these were put on as the result of the dissolution of the joint training centers though?
There were 28 organizers in 2020, 36 in 2021, 41 in 2022, 49 in 2023, and 58 in 2024. This is a pretty clear trend, an increase of over 100%. This is not surprising given President Fain’s public statements about organizing. Most of these organizers are likely paid out of the $60M allocated from the Strike Fund in Article 16 of our Constitution. I have not heard anything about where these organizers are coming from.
Public relations representatives went from 4 in 2020, 5 in 2021, 8 in 2022, 10 in 2023, and 18 in 2024. That is a whopping 450% increase from 2021 – 2024. We have seen a clear improvement in public relations in the Fain administration and this apparently requires more people to realize.
Research Specialists went from 5 in 2020, 2 in 2021, 3 in 2022 and 2023, and 5 in 2024. These are small numbers so it is hard to draw reliable conclusions. I did read in IEB meeting minutes that the IEB voted to pay all researchers at the AD level, but keep them in the bargaining unit, apparently believing they have higher skills that should be compensated. I am not sure what classification they were starting from if they were research specialists or something else.
Temporary Organizers went from 0 to 140 in 2024. I believe this was an accounting change. Prior to 2024, temporary organizers were paid through their locals, then the UAW reimbursed the locals. Also, these temporary organizers are typically on contracts of several months, and don’t always get renewed. And demand for these organizers fluctuates based on the active campaigns at any time. So I doubt there are 140 temporary organizers on staff at any time, but I could be wrong. But still, I believe there has been a significant increase in temporary organizers during Fain’s tenure as President, this has been noted in IEB meeting minutes.
A related concern to consider is how many of these people being brought in are UAW members, or from the outside. This is a sore spot for a lot of people, especially International Representatives who are hoping to advance their career, and workers on the shop floor or local union who’d like a career in the International. It is also a problem in the day-to-day running of the union, where so much of it depends on relationships built over time and tacit job knowledge that can’t easily be transferred to new hires. Nevertheless, I have long argued that some degree of bringing outside people in is good for the organization, to bring in fresh skills, ideas, and perspectives. Especially for an organization as staid as the UAW. But this can be taken too far, too.
Just for fun, I put together a list of the Administrative Assistants who were in the 2024 data but not in 2023. Then I looked up each of those names in the DOL LM2 website, I was hoping to find that prior to hiring into the UAW, these people had been officers or something in their UAW local. Unfortunately, of the seven AA’s that were in the 2024 list but not 2023, I wasn’t able to find a single one of them that had been active prior year in a UAW local in the DOL LM2 data. They had come from IBT, SEIU, OPEIU, etc., but not UAW that I could find.
Of the 7 Administrative Assistants that were in the 2023 data but not 2022, only 3 had any connection to the UAW that I can see. Susan Pratt was president of a UAW local prior. John Weyer was not in the earlier LM2 data, but he was discussed in an earlier IEB meeting as an example of how to handle the people working at one of the joint training centers before. So he was clearly coming from the UAW. I was told by someone who knows that Terriea Alessandrini came from the UAW ranks. But still, this seems a lot of outsiders being hired at the higher ranks in both 2023 and 2024. But considering there are 53 Administrative Assistants in 2024, 11 outside hires is probably not too many outsiders–assuming they are embedded in the organization and being utilized in an effective way. The 26% increase in AA positions over 3 years this is probably the bigger concern.
The current Chief of Staff, Donald “Chris” Brooks, was a labor journalist prior to being hired into this position. All of the Top AA’s appear to be have on the UAW payroll in 2022 with the exception of Bill Parker, who I know has been active in his UAW Local and the International for over 50 years.
I think the underlying complaint about outsiders has more to do with Shawn Fain’s inner circle, which appears to be Chris Brooks (Chief of Staff), Jonah Furman (Top AA), and Ben Dictor, all of them brought in from the outside. A universal complaint heard among staff is that President Fain has this small, closed inner circle who don’t understand the history of the UAW or the “why” of things are the way they are. And if you aren’t in this inner circle, you aren’t listened to. Further, these people aren’t invested in the UAW, or have a stake in its future, the way career UAW activists are. Jonah Furman, for example, can leave anytime he wants or whenever things get bad for Fain, and move on to a new political campaign. That’s the common complaint I’ve heard from several reps across different parts of the organization. This part can’t be sorted out with LM2 data.
If you want to see the data for yourself, download here: https://www.uawtransparencyproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/employee-pivot-table-summary.xlsx
If you want to download the data yourself, go to https://olmsapps.dol.gov/olpdr/#Union%20Reports/Officer/Employee%20Search/ and use file 000149 and select the year you are interested in. Then click “Search”. Select “Export All” from the blue “Export” drop-down box. Now you have an Excel spreadsheet with all the UAW employees in a given year, with their job titles, gross salary, and more.
Here is the list of folks in the 2024 LM2 data that weren’t in the 2023 data:
Name Title Gross Salary
DONALD FOSTER ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT $121,692
HELEN BROSNAN ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT $75,349
KRISSI JIMROGLOU ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT $124,052
MARY SEITZ-BROWN ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT $14,337
MELISSA PARRINO-KING ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT $112,565
MICHAEL MORRISON ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT $129,775
RAJIV SICORA ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT $101,580
ALAN HANSON ASSISTANT – MAJOR $127,254
ARTURO REYES ASSISTANT – MAJOR $38,474
ERIC DRYBURGH ASSISTANT – MAJOR $111,086
NATHAN PENSLER ASSISTANT – MAJOR $21,981
SHUNTE SANDERS-BEASLEY ASSISTANT – MAJOR $111,387
VALENCIA WHITE ASSISTANT – MAJOR $80,851
ALEC UEBERSOHN ORGANIZER $84,927
CAMALEE HEFTY ORGANIZER $99,832
CANDACE WATT ORGANIZER $90,926
EMMA JOSLYN ORGANIZER $99,779
ETHAN HILL ORGANIZER $99,784
KIANA AZAR ORGANIZER $98,063
MARIA SANCHEZ ORGANIZER $99,881
MARISSA PARKER ORGANIZER $78,721
NEAL SWEENEY ORGANIZER $67,611
RODDRICK PASSMORE ORGANIZER $55,900
TIMOTHY ROBINSON ORGANIZER $99,797
YOLANDA SWIFT ORGANIZER $99,903
ZENIA PATRICK ORGANIZER $131,900
ZOE CAREY ORGANIZER $67,582
AMELIA DORNBUSH PUBLIC RELATIONS REP $69,130
ANDREA GUINN PUBLIC RELATIONS REP $78,314
AUSTIN BEDELL PUBLIC RELATIONS REP $75,223
BENJAMIN PACKER PUBLIC RELATIONS REP $98,665
CHARLES MITCHELL PUBLIC RELATIONS REP $38,939
DIANA HUSSEIN PUBLIC RELATIONS REP $92,435
EMMA DESSAU PUBLIC RELATIONS REP $32,262
KHAMISI BENFORD PUBLIC RELATIONS REP $64,454
JACOB WHITON RESEARCH SPECIALIST $74,030
SARA YENZER RESEARCH SPECIALIST $74,036
AARON SHINAUL SERVICING REP $47,380
ALEXI SHALOM SERVICING REP $58,974
ALFRED WALKER SERVICING REP $115,214
AMY FEHR SERVICING REP $78,329
ANGELA VANARNAM SERVICING REP $43,060
BRIAN DEVEZIN SERVICING REP $40,915
CHAD KELLUMS SERVICING REP $71,916
CHRISTOPHER LUTZ SERVICING REP $78,340
COREY FROST SERVICING REP $76,260
COREY HILL SERVICING REP $40,932
DAISY HAWS SERVICING REP $15,058
DANIEL ECHIKSON SERVICING REP $80,470
DAVID FIRKINS SERVICING REP $90,577
EDWARD GORDISH SERVICING REP $78,518
GABRIELA ROSAZZA SERVICING REP $52,521
HENRY BROWN SERVICING REP $111,004
JAMES BELL SERVICING REP $45,174
JASON WALLER SERVICING REP $55,900
JESSE RAMIREZ SERVICING REP $65,461
JOHN SALKO SERVICING REP $54,705
JONATHAN DRURY SERVICING REP $100,733
LUIS ESPINOSA-ORGANIS SERVICING REP $30,147
MALIKA PENN SERVICING REP $32,267
MATTHEW DIEBEL SERVICING REP $80,526
MICHAEL KALMAN SERVICING REP $32,289
PATRICIA WU SERVICING REP $82,683
ROBIN TAYLOR SERVICING REP $43,064
RYAN BUCHALSKI SERVICING REP $117,199
SAMUEL APPEL SERVICING REP $67,582
SARA SCHAMBERS SERVICING REP $58,988
YUNYI LI SERVICING REP $45,160
And here is the list of those in the 2023 data but not 2022:
Name Title Gross Salary
BRIAN SHEPHERD ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT $109,915
JOHN WEYER ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT $137,374
JONAH FURMAN ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT $98,028
SUSAN PRATT ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT $102,001
TERRIEA ALESSANDRINI ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT $144,651
TONY PERLSTEIN ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT $99,002
TONYA MILLER-SWIFT ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT $128,650
A. DAVERE GODFREY ASSISTANT – MAJOR $94,815
JAMES MCNEILL ASSISTANT – MAJOR $79,277
TIMOTHY THOMAS ASSISTANT – MAJOR $105,315
ALEXANDRA KOHNERT-YOUNT ASSISTANT – REGION $98,909
AVERY GRIGSBY ORGANIZER $100,522
MOLLY STUART ORGANIZER $100,447
NATALIE BARMAN ORGANIZER $100,437
THOMAS ZIEGLER ORGANIZER $82,505
JEREMY FLOOD PUBLIC RELATIONS REP $78,505
TAMAR SAMIR PUBLIC RELATIONS REP $82,524
AARON EISENBERG SERVICING REP $26,630
AARTHI SEKAR SERVICING REP $53,709
ALLISON CARLISLE SERVICING REP $104,460
ANTHONY TOWNER SERVICING REP $92,617
BRENT HOLLINGSWORTH SERVICING REP $74,594
BRIAN WIGGINS SERVICING REP $78,531
BRYON NUSBAUM SERVICING REP $78,526
FRANK HINES SERVICING REP $104,466
JASON TUCK SERVICING REP $104,448
JASON VANBOCXLAER SERVICING REP $100,581
JA-VONNA AKINS SERVICING REP $43,591
JEFFREY BROWN SERVICING REP $104,804
JENNIFER PALION SERVICING REP $100,533
JERMAINE MARTIN SERVICING REP $76,261
JESSICA BRYANT-HARDWELL SERVICING REP $84,461
JESSICA SCOTT SERVICING REP $92,572
JOHN COWSERT SERVICING REP $82,524
JOHN STANFILL SERVICING REP $66,151
JONATHAN JAGGERS SERVICING REP $43,591
NICKI MCDONALD SERVICING REP $49,629
NORRIS WALTON SERVICING REP $112,686
ROSS BAIZE SERVICING REP $92,521
SAMANTHA SUMPTER SERVICING REP $104,432
SCOTT LUBACZEWSKI SERVICING REP $104,579
SCOTT MOLDENHAUER SERVICING REP $88,665
SEAN NAGODA SERVICING REP $94,572
SEBASTIAN VIVANCOS SERVICING REP $57,799
SHAWANA WOODS SERVICING REP $104,523
SHAWN COOK SERVICING REP $82,480
THOMAS HINTZE SERVICING REP $104,436
TIFFANY BUSH SERVICING REP $106,536
TIFFANY COLEMAN-WEATHERS SERVICING REP $47,575
TIMOTHY CHANCE SERVICING REP $102,614
WENCESLAO VALENTIN III SERVICING REP $78,540
WILEY TURNAGE SERVICING REP $39,422
IVIK INJERD SYSTEMS ANALYST $92,521
WILLIAM PARKER TOP ADMINISTRATIVE ASSIST $124,517