UAW monitor certifies leadership election results, but not everyone is ready to move on

The results from the UAW’s first direct election of top leaders are now official.

Neil Barofsky, the independent monitor for the United Auto Workers union, has certified the results, which made Shawn Fain the union’s president and ushered in an International Executive Board with many new faces from members who had run as reformers.

Fain bested former UAW President Ray Curry for the top spot in a runoff phase of the election earlier this year. That runoff featured a lengthy counting process that lasted for weeks over the status of challenged ballots and briefly put the top leadership of the union in question ahead of the crucial special bargaining convention in Detroit to set priorities for talks with Ford, General Motors and Jeep- and Chrysler-parent Stellantis.

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The certification, announced in a federal court filing in Detroit on Friday, was not necessarily in doubt, but the filing indicates not everyone is ready to move on.

The monitor, who was tasked with overseeing the election and the union following the corruption scandal that sent numerous top leaders to prison, noted that he had resolved all election protests, but some protesters have appealed to the U.S. Department of Labor.

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The Free Press sent an email requesting additional information, including about the status of those protests, to spokespeople for the department.

The report, listed as the monitor’s seventh, said the monitor would advise on the status of the protests in a future report.