A strange investment blunder might have cost the United Auto Workers union a colossal $80 million, according to a report on Monday.
The union’s board voted in August 2023 to liquidate about $340 million in stock investments to pay striking workers starting the following month, and ordered the remaining funds be quickly re-invested after the protests ended.
Strikes ended in October 2023 after just one month of picketing – but more than a year later, that cash had still not been re-invested, according to UAW officials, union employees and documents reviewed by Reuters.
If the portfolio had been swiftly re-invested in stocks, the UAW – which represents 400,000 workers, including many at General Motors, Ford and Stellantis – might have earned $80 million more, union staff said in an analysis from February.
The UAW did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Board members grew suspicious late last year and started questioning why the union’s return on its portfolio seemed so small compared to overall gains in the stock market, according to documents and five sources familiar with the matter.
At one meeting, UAW President Shawn Fain asked why he could get higher gains in a bank account than the UAW was reaping, according to four people present at the gathering.
It turned out that the union’s strike fund had been used to pay workers $500 a week, but rather than investing the remainder in stocks, it was placed in a mix of cash, fixed-income and alternative assets in September 2024, according to documents viewed by Reuters.
Union staffers presented the $80 million figure in February 2025. Their analysis did not include the methodology used to reach that number, though sources said it was based on a comparison of actual results to what the returns would have been in the stock market.
The matter is now being investigated by a federal monitor that was appointed as part of a 2020 settlement between the union and the Department of Justice over a multi-year corruption probe.
Responsibility for UAW’s investments is shared by the union president, secretary-treasurer and its three vice presidents, Michael Nicholson, attorney for Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock told Reuters.
“We welcome the monitor’s review regarding investments, because we believe that any accusations against Margaret Mock are unfounded,” he added.
Tensions have been brewing between Mock and Fain, with the latter inappropriately stripping Mock of some of her duties in February 2024 because she wouldn’t authorize certain expenditures related to strike preparations, according to a report by the union’s federal monitor.
The union’s board appears to have taken Fain’s side in the investment snafu, writing in a statement that she’s under investigation by the federal monitor “for a significant compliance failure regarding our union’s investments.”
Segal Marco Advisors worked with the union to manage its $1 billion strike trust, according to documents and sources.
The firm did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
