In the wake of the United Auto Workers corruption scandal several years ago, the federal watchdog overseeing the Detroit union issued a seemingly basic recommendation: Create an annual budget.

The UAW — a sprawling organization with roughly 400,000 dues-paying members and more than $1 billion spread across several funds — had not previously used a formal budgeting process. Creating one, the union's court-appointed monitor wrote in 2021, would help set financial priorities, promote transparency, hold leaders accountable, and, crucially, help deter the kind of financial "malfeasance" that had sent multiple top union officials, including two former presidents, to prison.

The union, having already received a similar recommendation from its own consultant, agreed that a budgeting process was necessary. Five years later, the UAW still doesn't have a budget.

Instead, it continues to rely on an opaque process where departments and regions seek out money for hiring or other purposes, expenditures that then must typically be approved by the union's top leadership, the International Executive Board.

The process of creating a formal budgeting process — supposed to be completed "no later" than 2023 — has been delayed by infighting and other distractions at Solidarity House, according to reports by the union's monitor, attorney Neil Barofsky, who was appointed by a federal judge to watch over the union after its corruption scandal. A union spokesperson did not provide a comment for this story.

The lack of a budget was a contentious topic last week during a candidate debate for secretary-treasurer, the union's second-highest position, which oversees UAW financials and membership lists. Current Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock faces two challengers in Brandon Campbell, a current regional director, and Roc Ciers, who has served in several union financial roles and now works as a UAW regional education coordinator.

Union finances are also likely to come up Thursday evening when six UAW presidential candidates, including incumbent Shawn Fain, face off in a livestreamed debate ahead of ballots being mailed out to members in late August. Fain is under federal investigation for allegedly abusing his power to secure benefits for his fiancée and her sister.

"We have got a billion-dollar organization with no budget at the international level — we can do better," said Campbell, who is running on a slate of candidates alongside Fain, during the secretary-treasurer debate.

He criticized the union for paying a consultant to help develop a budgeting process, even as it continues to go without one. UAW filings show the union paid Deloitte at least $250,000 for "financial budgeting" professional services in 2023 and 2024, and more than $1.1 million in total over the last three years.

Mock said during the debate that the union does, after several years of work, now have "a framework for a budget" that was approved by the union's executive board, and indicated it was the board itself, including Campbell, that had delayed the process, not her office. She said her office has sought to put forward a comprehensive budget to the board previously.

"You're right, I think it's a shame we don't have a budget," she said during the debate.

Ciers said both Mock and Campbell bear some responsibility for the delays, considering both have served on the executive board that oversees the union in recent years.

"I think it's shameful that the two board members in this race have not been able to create a budget that was requested by the monitor's office years ago," he said.

UAW senior staff and department heads don't have a way to project and plan expenditures for the next fiscal year, the 2021 monitor's report said. The union's regional organizations spread across the country also don't receive budgets.

According to a report by the union's own consultant, Exiger, which the UAW hired to help clean up its act following the corruption scandal, proper budgeting would ensure the organization acts as "a good steward" of its members' dues money.

By mid-2024, the monitor wrote that while the union was slow to initiate a budgeting process, the work had begun, including the the hiring of Deloitte. But later that year, disagreements over how to proceed — and the true financial condition of the union — arose at an executive board meeting, even as Mock's office presented a full budgeting process for approval.

Fain labeled the proposed new budgeting process "garbage," according to one monitor report, and said that the union was "nowhere near ready to make a decision today." The board then shelved the budget framework.

A new budget committee was formed, this time led by the president's office, which some inside the union viewed as setting the process back to square one. For months after, the monitor said, there was "no meaningful progress" on setting up a budget, amid infighting between the secretary-treasurer and president's offices. Tensions had already been rising between the secretary and president, after Fain stripped key duties from Mock, moves that the monitor later found were improper and retaliatory.

In a written statement, Fain blamed the delays on Mock, and said the executive board needed to "step in to get the process back on track so we can best serve our members. It's a shame our Secretary-Treasurer hasn't been up to the job, but thankfully we are now in a position to get it done."

Back in 2021, the monitor wrote that "without a budget, it is easier to avoid scrutiny of wasteful and improper spending, like renting a villa for three months on the Union's dime." That was what former UAW officials, including former President Dennis Williams, were able to get away with — among other luxuries they purchased using member dues — before eventually being caught by federal investigators.

"If we have line items that we are tracking day in day out, then we can see when somebody veers outside the lines," Campbell said during the secretary-treasurer debate. "Hell, I've got more line items in my household budget than we do in this international union."

The budget delays come as the union faces several financial challenges, and as members were recently asked to keep paying the same amount in dues, despite passing a financial threshold that was expected to result in a dues reduction.

Mock raised concerns over "financial pressure" in a recent letter to delegates of the union's constitutional convention, especially due to "higher payroll and operating costs." Payroll costs have especially surged under the current administration, as the union beefed up certain departments such as organizing and communications. Staffing rose by 74 people from the end of 2023 to year-end 2025, rising to nearly 800 people, she wrote.

Mock told delegates that spending outpaced revenue last year, leading to an operating loss of about $9 million, even after earning about $60 million in investment income in addition to dues money. "With rising costs from expanded staffing, we will need more than $80 million in investment gains in 2026 to cover expenses," she wrote.

The monitor has also reported on a previous investment blunder that cost the union potentially millions of dollars in unrealized stock gains. Barofsky did not find evidence of misconduct by Mock in that case, but did highlight broad governance and communication failures, including in her office, that contributed to the investment mistakes.

The last UAW election, in 2022, was expected to be a reset for the union as it sought to move past a recent history of corruption. But some candidates — including during a vice president debate earlier this week — argue more leadership change is needed. Some raised concerns that Barofsky may seek to extend his oversight of the union beyond the current expiration of early 2027 — oversight that has also been a financial drag on the union, costing tens of millions of dollars.

"If we want to get the monitor out of our business, we've got to conduct ourselves as professionals," said Ryan Hiestand, a vice president candidate running on Fain's slate and a servicing representative with the union.

Added Rachael Dickinson, a vice president candidate and the current leader of UAW Local 6000: "This union is broken, this union does not have a united front, and we need new people to come in to clean it up, and do the right thing."

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