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Union corruption and what should be done about it—Part I

Rome is burning

Image courtesy of Brown Dog Welding.

Prologue

Disclaimer: I want to make it crystal clear that this is not an indictment of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) or the UAW as a whole. I have many incredibly kind-hearted, gifted, and incorruptible friends WHO work for FCA. Chrysler has treated me so well over the years, and almost in two separate lives at that. I learned my trade there as an employee before taking a buyout in 2009. More recently FCA has afforded me opportunities for adventure and growth as a writer/social media influencer that no other automotive manufacturer would, and for that I am and forever will be grateful. I’m still a UAW member, now at General Dynamics Land Systems, and I have a great relationship with our local leaders. I absolutely believe that organized labor in some form is necessary to give our workforce strength. Our laws would quickly tilt in the favor of corporations if national union lobbying power dissolved. It’s because of my friends, family, and these beliefs that I am very passionate about getting this ship righted.

If you run your own business or work for a nonunion corporation, you might be scratching your head and thinking, “Why do I care?” Union corruption isn’t a new story. It often is referenced when arguing against forming new unions. Well, besides the lobbying power that keeps labor laws for all workers from tilting more and more to big business, a high tide lifts all boats.

Some nonunion facilities at companies like Toyota do pay excellent wages and provide good benefits, but these might not exist without the threat of a union organizing in their plants. I’ve been on both sides. I worked for Steelcase, which was a fiercely nonunion workforce, as it went from being a privately owned company that for decades treated its employees great, to a publicly traded company that changed direction quickly. In the late 1990s, Steelcase (led by Jim Hackett, now CEO of Ford) started outsourcing work overseas and laying off massive numbers of workers, many of whom had worked for the manufacturer since they were kids out of high school. With little to no transitional help from the company, entire communities were devastated. With no union, there was no recourse.

What these major employers do affects the entire economy, whether you work for them or not.

Having said that, the United Auto Workers (UAW) needs to clean house.

The latest corruption scandal involving—but definitely not limited to—the late UAW Vice President General Holiefield; his second wife Monica Morgan-Holiefield; former FCA Vice President and Labor Negotiator Alphons Iacobelli; and former FCA Financial Analyst Jerome Durden is finally shining a light on what the UAW rank and file have known for decades. High-ranking UAW officials were getting rich and living the high life at their members’ expense.

Honestly, the opening statement, that the UAW needs to “clean house,” seems kind of quaint now. Since I started writing this a few days ago, word has leaked that six more players, three from the UAW and three from FCA, are to be indicted by a federal grand jury. No one will be surprised if that number grows. Also, FCA UAW workers have just filed a class-action lawsuit claiming their reps worked against their best interests, basically stealing hundreds of millions of dollars in union dues over (at least) the last two contracts.

Make no mistake about it, this is not a new scam. The current “leaders” just happened to get caught. Let’s get in the way-back-machine and time-travel to 18 years ago, when I got my first taste of UAW corruption. This is my story, the sum of my experiences and the experiences of my family and friends. I believe the greatest validation of my “old” stories is how they so closely match up with the “new” stories: the testimony of the indicted and convicted, the words of the actual indictments, current complaints filed with the National Labor Rights Board, and the multiple class actions lawsuits against the UAW.

Nate Gooden, who passed away in 2006, held the UAW VP position prior to Holiefield. He was the man in charge of the union when I was hired at Mopar during the winter of 2000-2001 with Holiefield as his right-hand man. The group of new hires I started with knew that at least one other Chrysler plant had workers laid off at the time. Many of us had quit decent jobs; we weren’t even allowed to give a two-week notice. I’d received the initial call from Chrysler human resources on a Friday evening. “Either show up on Monday, or you’re not getting in.” Obviously, we were concerned about our job safety. During our initial orientation, a Mopar official was asked if the other layoffs would affect our employment. “No,” we were told emphatically. “Mopar hasn’t had a layoff in 40 years. Those workers have call-back rights to their plant, but they cannot replace you here.”

Thirty days later we were all let go and replaced by those who had been laid off. We didn’t have our 90 days in, so we had no call-back rights and no benefits.

Working at Mopar was considered “easy money”; it was sought-after warehouse work, which was thought to be much less stressful than working on an assembly line. We were replaced by workers who were never going to lose their jobs for good, and who by UAW rules had no right to replace us.

You might ask, “But I thought the UAW couldn’t direct manpower?” And yet there I was, on the outside looking in.

Before I left I’d taken the apprenticeship exam and tested well, so just under two years later I was hired by Chrysler’s Mack 2 engine plant in Detroit, as a millwright apprentice. I came in with a small group of future tradesmen, which I later found odd, considering the UAW/Chrysler contract book called for nearly 500 apprentices to be hired during that four-year span.

My group started a five-week course at the UAW/Chrysler Training Center in Warren, Mich., where they made sure we had a basic understanding of tools, health, and safety before entering our respective factories. On the first day, we sat in a classroom as one of the instructors went through the toolkit we were given. He held out a tape measure. A guy in the back of the class raised his hand and asked, “Uh, what do the lines between the numbers mean?” The rest of us turned and stared back, incredulous. This guy was a nephew of a union leader. He went on to become a pipefitter, despite his journeyman failing him for incompetence.

I worked at Mack 2 from 2002 to 2009 as an apprentice, then as a journeyman millwright. In those seven years, I heard a lot of rumors that I can’t necessarily prove, but also saw a lot of evidence of some very shady dealings. When we emphatically voted down a proposed alternative work schedule (AWS), our then UAW Local 51 President “Big” John Williams put out a “letter to the people” comparing the hard-working employees of Mack 1 and Mack 2 to his children. He stated, “Sometimes children need to just do what their father tells them to do, because he knows what's best.” He was reading from a memo so fraught with spelling and grammar errors that I took a red pen out, fixed his mistakes, graded it “F,” and posted it up on the message board at the main entrance. It didn't stay up long.

What else was happening during that time? We heard whispers about family of union leadership getting company or union contracts. Word went around about retreats and trips that may have been funded by our National Training Center; meanwhile, we were told our training budget was cut. News reports seem to give life to some of these rumors.

At many large manufacturing companies, it’s common practice to give workers “referrals,” either directly or through a lottery, which allows them to obtain a job application for a relative or friend. It’s isn’t guaranteed, but it’s a shot—a reward for their years of service. Suddenly that stopped, and long-tenured workers wondered why. Now they could hop online and wonder out loud. A site such as Topix.com is filled with threads of stories of people who supposedly paid or witnessed someone paying for a job application, which (if true) is a clear violation of rules. And those selling the applications obviously weren’t paying taxes on this bonus income. In 2013 the FBI investigated some of these claims. Though he professed he was exonerated by the Feds, Holiefield’s top assistant, James Hardy,1, was forced out due to this probe by then UAW President Bob King. The longtime head of FCA’s human resources department, Nancy Rae, also suddenly retired.2

In 2013 and 2014 I shared links, via Facebook, to newspaper stories that said in 2013, King gave Holiefield an ultimatum to announce his retirement or face closer investigation, but now the links come up as “404 Error Cannot be Found”.3 King had been questioning Holiefield and Iacobelli’s finances since at least 2011, explicitly saying they could “go to jail” for giving UAW and charity contracts to Holiefield’s then girlfriend Monica Morgan. This quote is stated in the current federal indictment against them. Holiefield agreed to retire at the end of his term but, in my opinion, never intended to. King couldn’t “fire” him.

We may never know for sure, as shortly thereafter he finally met his match in the form of pancreatic cancer.

1http://wardsauto.com/industry/late-uaw-vice-president-leaves-tarnished-legacy
2http://www.autonews.com/article/20131010/OEM02/131019990/chrysler-hr-chief-nancy-rae-to-retire-jan.- 1
3https://www.facebook.com/joshwelton/posts/10202211755158343:0
4http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20170727/news/634961/indictment-says-former-uaw-president-bob-ki ng-confronted-holiefield