The UAW Monitor has repeatedly interfered in our union’s affairs and influenced the ongoing election for top UAW leadership, continuing a long history of state attacks that have weakened labor unions and protected profits. To build independent working-class power to fight our bosses, we must oppose state intervention and defend our unions as democratic organizations.
Read the full article by Andrew Bergman (UAW Local 22) at link in bio or here: https://dailystruggle.org/struggle-for-class-independent-unionism/
This piece being co-released with ‘The Case for Replacing UAW Monitor Neil Barofsky,’ which can also be found at link in bio.
====
The Struggle for Class-Independent Unionism in the Face of State Intervention
Andrew Bergman October 1, 2026
The UAW Monitor has repeatedly interfered in our union’s affairs and influenced the ongoing election for top UAW leadership, continuing a long history of state attacks that have weakened labor unions and protected profits. To build independent working-class power to fight our bosses, we must oppose state intervention and defend our unions as democratic organizations.
This article is being co-released with The Case for Replacing UAW Monitor Neil Barofsky.
The months leading up to the ongoing UAW election, with ballots being counted next week, have seen a series of political crises for the UAW. Different factions and leaders within the UAW bureaucracy have come into conflict and called on the UAW’s court-appointed Monitor to investigate one another, followed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) informing UAW leaders that it had opened an investigation into UAW President Shawn Fain based on the Monitor’s findings. To exert political control over the UAW, the Monitor has offered himself up as a weapon to settle UAW leaders’ scores.
This is no accident—it’s one more chapter in the long, interventionist history of federal union monitorships. Far from serving as a neutral arbiter, the Monitor has taken a clear position against the UAW’s opposition to the genocide in Gaza and inappropriately intervened to pressure the union to walk it back.
As workers, we should understand that the state, run by the Democrats and Republicans, the two parties of the capitalist elite, will always uphold the interests of the ruling class. Anyone who has ever been on strike has had to consider the threat of police surveillance or a court injunction. Since the 1800s, there has been an ongoing use of police and National Guard to put down strikes at the behest of the capitalist class. The state will always heed the call to wield its power and put down workers who threaten profits.
Giving the state power over our unions enables our bosses to dictate our internal decision-making, undermining our political independence and threatening the autonomy of our working-class organizations. State intervention into our union’s democratic functioning doesn’t necessarily manifest in a clearly political way. But even when the intervention may seem harmless, or is even framed as legally justified, giving the state control over internal policy-setting and allowing it to discipline our union’s members and officers enables state actors to interfere with political disputes by wielding their administrative power. This influence could be extended to exert control over political endorsements, undermine preparations for a serious UAW strike in 2028, and more.
As trade unionists and militants organizing on our shop floors, we must oppose state intervention in our unions’ affairs. Instead, we should uphold the political independence of our unions, as autonomous, democratic working-class organizations that have member-controlled political and administrative processes. And we must take a clear stance against labor union leaders who condone and enable state intervention.
Taft-Hartley and the history of state intervention
Open a US history book and you’ll see that the last century has been riddled with state attacks on labor unions and the working class to quash class struggle. The attacks span all kinds of state intervention: the establishment of the National War Labor Board to enforce no-strike policies in cahoots with union leaders during World War II, Reagan’s crushing of the 1981 PATCO strike to begin a larger offensive against union protections, the 2022 imposition of a rail contract by Congress in the face of a looming strike, and more.
To understand the corrosive power of state intervention, and of labor union leaders who condone and enable the undermining of class independence, we can look at a key example from the early days of the McCarthy era: the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947.
Taft-Hartley had direct consequences for labor union power, including banning solidarity strikes, disallowing “mass picketing,” allowing states to pass so-called “right-to-work” laws, and giving bosses more power to interfere in union elections through anti-union propaganda. It also had a notable provision that would undermine working-class solidarity for years to come: requiring that union leaders sign affidavits swearing that they weren’t members of the Communist Party (CP). If they refused, the unions they led would lose access to the NLRB, preventing them from initiating union elections and filing Unfair Labor Practice charges.
Initially, leaders of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which included communist-led unions, were unified in their refusal to comply with the anti-communist affidavits, seeing them as an attempt to undermine their class independence. But the unified opposition quickly gave way as anti-communist CIO leaders realized they could align with the state and use it to quash their political opponents. As the United Electrical Workers (UE) puts it:
“While most of the labor movement mouthed agreement with these sentiments, behind the scenes too many labor leaders quietly made their peace with Taft-Hartley. […] CIO leaders who were more concerned with amassing union treasuries than aggressive struggle against the employer saw in Taft-Hartley’s prohibition of ‘wildcat’ strikes an opportunity to discipline an unruly rank and file.”
The break in solidarity by CIO leaders, letting the state violate the autonomy of working-class organizations, had sharp consequences that undermined working-class power right away. By 1948, UAW President Walter Reuther had already begun raiding the CP-led Farm Equipment Workers (FE), which lost a quarter of its membership that year. Only two years later, at the 1949 CIO Convention, Reuther and other anti-communist CIO leaders intensified their effort into a purge, expelling eleven CP-led unions, including FE and UE, and chartering new unions to enable them to continue raiding and decimating the expelled unions. Taft-Hartley meant that the communist-led unions being raided couldn’t even appear on union election ballots to defend their position.
Ultimately, while the state initially lacked the support of mainstream labor leaders, those leaders were willing to be co-opted. They turned on fellow working-class militants, not only to save themselves but to increase their power. They undermined the labor movement in the long run, serving the ruling class in establishing a regime of labor peace. As UE concludes, “The loyalty act provisions of Taft-Hartley turned most of the US labor movement into a compliant ‘junior partner’ to corporate America, one that would fight for higher wages and benefits for its members but not question the broader direction of society.”
Eventually, class-collaborationist union leaders even stopped fighting to improve wages and benefits, selling members concessions so companies could stay “profitable” or “competitive.”
The UAW’s corruption scandal and the Monitor’s co-optation of our top leaders
The federal government’s recent intervention into internal UAW operations has a less obviously political origin at first glance—but the capitalist class is savvy enough to understand that, even when the state is initially brought in to “root out corruption” or “bring accountability” to working-class organizations like labor unions, that remit can be extended to enable elites to exert political control. This is the defining characteristic of several decades of federal union monitorships.
The UAW Monitor was appointed by a court in 2021 following a Department of Justice investigation that uncovered high-level corruption in the UAW, including embezzling union funds and accepting kickbacks for employer collusion. The investigation led to the conviction of 16 staff and elected leaders, including two former UAW presidents. Corporate executives used their money and power to undermine our union’s political independence by co-opting our leaders, and the state took the opportunity to take control of a prominent working-class institution.
UAW members and working-class militants were right to lose all faith in the corrupt bureaucrats who colluded with our bosses and the entrenched bureaucratic system that enabled the collusion. But that doesn’t mean we should have cheered the imposition of state control over our union. Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD) and reformers across the UAW praised the work of the Monitor early on after his appointment, which we were wrong to do. While it was important that UAWD intervene to engage with the consent decree and argue for a democratic referendum on direct elections, and while UAWD’s campaign was critical in winning One Member, One Vote, we could have played that role while continuing to oppose state intervention into our union.
The reality is that, having known all of the relevant allegations for over two years, the Monitor’s finding of retaliation was a way to exert political influence and undermine the ongoing UAW International Executive Board election just before the election ballots were mailed out.
Once UAWD members and leading reformers like Fain lent our independent credibility to the Monitor, we undermined our ability to critique him later, when he chose to use his influence for political ends. And that’s exactly what he did, expanding his remit beyond the consent decree, which has a narrow stated purpose of rooting out “fraud, corruption, illegal behavior, dishonesty, and unethical practices.” Even when there has been no evidence of misappropriation of funds or collusion with employers, the Monitor has launched investigations into the UAW’s internal policy-setting and political decision-making. He investigated Fain’s use of the UAW president’s power to choose which officials are responsible for which departments, specifically the removal of offices from the portfolio of Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock and Vice President Rich Boyer.
Despite a clear practical and political basis for claiming that both Mock and Boyer had significant shortcomings, the Monitor determined that their removals were “retaliatory,” enabling him to threaten action, but saying he’d await further review by the UAW and DOJ. The reality is that, having known all of the relevant allegations for over two years, the Monitor’s finding of retaliation was a way to exert political influence and undermine the ongoing UAW International Executive Board election just before the election ballots were mailed out.
Unfortunately, our top leaders are continuing to reinforce the role of the Monitor, even following the announcement of the Monitor’s investigation. At the recent Candidate Forum for President for the UAW election, almost every candidate gave credence to the importance of the Monitor, some crediting the Monitor fully with “cleaning up the UAW,” without mention of the role of the UAW membership in demanding and winning change through direct elections of top UAW leadership. Despite having been at times critical of the Monitor, Fain even bragged that he worked closely with the Monitor prior to being attacked by him, and he said that he continues to work well with the Monitor’s team and that he “wouldn’t be here today as president if it weren’t for the Monitor.”
Committing to class struggle unionism and opposing state intervention
The ability of the DOJ to launch an investigation of top UAW leadership without a mass outcry from UAW members across the country demonstrates how much power our union has handed the state to surveil and exert control over our leaders.
The power to reassign the offices that UAW officials oversee has long been delegated by the UAW Constitution to the UAW president. The membership may have good reason to change our process of political appointments, and we need a more democratic union to enable member control, but handing that role to an external state agent has only undermined our union.
Further, as UAW members, we can make our own choices to replace our leaders or discipline them for violating our own rules or Ethical Practices Codes. We have mechanisms internal to our union that are enshrined in our Constitution, including the ability to file charges that can result in expulsion and a Public Review Board that provides independent oversight. And as a union we can make our own choices about whom we want to hand over information to about internal disciplinary investigations. Again, if we want to reform or strengthen those processes, the UAW membership has the ability to do so within our organization through collective deliberation, by amending our Constitution and electing different leaders.
We shouldn’t be surprised that the DOJ is threatening the leader of the 2023 Stand Up Strike. Even if it could’ve employed a more militant, bottom-up strategy, the strike was one of the most significant in the US in recent decades and posed a real threat to the ruling class.
Ultimately, however, the challenge we face today is that our union has become so bureaucratic and our leaders have been so co-opted that we have relinquished the fight against the bosses. To fight for the working class, within and beyond our unions, we must reinvigorate a commitment to class struggle unionism, on the shop floor and beyond.
We shouldn’t be surprised that the DOJ is threatening the leader of the 2023 Stand Up Strike. Even if it could’ve employed a more militant, bottom-up strategy, the strike was one of the most significant in the US in recent decades and posed a real threat to the ruling class. If UAW leadership is serious about planning for a powerful strike in 2028, when the Big Three and other contracts expire, we should prepare for the Monitor or DOJ attempt to undermine preparations. Even just the threat of action could make the UAW bureaucracy more risk averse.
As trade unionists and working-class militants, to make sure we don’t continue to get bogged down as we wage these struggles, we must stop giving credence to and emboldening interventions by the capitalist class. Doing so undermines our internal solidarity and supports their goal of delegitimizing and controlling our organizations. Instead, we should commit to opposing state intervention and building independent unions that fight for the global working class.
Featured Image Credit: National Archives and Records Administration
- Andrew Bergman UAW Local 22
