Iacobelli encouraged training center staff to use NTC-issued credit cards for personal purchases, to keep senior members of the UAW Chrysler Department “fat, dumb, and happy,” “take company friendly positions,” and to pay off co-conspirators to cover it all up. NTC funds paid for over $262,000 on his mortgage. Over $200,000 worth of purchases were charged to Holiefield’s NTC credit card including jewelry, furniture, and other personal expenses. Iacobelli and Holiefield and their cronies embezzled $4.5 million of joint training funds from the NTC to pay for items that varied in value from shoes, purses, and luggage to $2180 Belgian shotgun, $37,500 solid-gold Mont Blanc fountain pens, and a Ferrari sports car. One provision of the LMRA sought to prevent corruption of the collective bargaining process that occurs when an employer gives something of value to the union representative, presumably to influence the representative to ignore his or her duty to promote the interests of union members. District Court, Eastern District of Michigan, Southern Division charged that Fiat Chrysler Vice President Alphons Iacobelli and UAW Vice President of the Chrysler department General Holiefield violated the Labor-Management Relations Act (LMRA).
The lack of public oversight of joint training funds produced a “culture of corruption” among the UAW-Chrysler National Training Center (NTC) directors that led to bribery, theft, influence peddling, and a cover-up of criminal activity. However, the enormous sums involved were enticing to those who saw opportunities to pocket the money. One program is aimed at training workers. The funds that support these programs amount to hundreds of millions of dollars, funded in various ways but never overseen in a transparent and public way.
#Detroit free press uaw gm series
The UAW and the Big Three automakers, General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler, have established a series of joint programs (described below), serving a variety of interests, all purportedly aimed at benefiting union members.
Ideals get tarnished quickly under the corrosion of material prosperity
And just how difficult it will be to rebuild a labor movement worthy of the name. That the UAW, an iconic union, born of heroic class struggle, could sink into corruption, with a bloated and dictatorial bureaucracy, only shows in microcosm what ails much of organized labor in the United States. Unfortunately, what is true of the United Auto Workers (UAW) is true for many U.S. What follows is a somewhat complex tale of what happens when a labor union, structured to be unaccountable to the rank-and-file membership, embraces a system of labor-management cooperation rather than a class-conscious understanding that workers and their employers are adversaries with fundamentally opposed goals and desires.
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