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Behind a U.A.W. Crisis: Lavish Meals and Luxury Villas (perks like a $6,500 steak dinner and golf outings and gear costing $80,000)
New York Times ^ | December 26, 2019 | Noam Scheiber and Neal E. Boudette

Posted on 12/26/2019 4:43:17 AM PST by karpov

On a single day in December 2015, Gary Jones, who resigned last month as president of the United Automobile Workers, spent more than $13,000 of the union’s money at a cigar store in Arizona. His purchases included a dozen $268 boxes of Ashton Double Magnums and a dozen boxes of Ashton Monarchs at $274.50 each. “Hi Gary, Thank you & Happy New Year,” read a handwritten note from the store.

The purchases, documented by a federal complaint filed against a union leader in September, were part of more than $60,000 in cigars and cigar paraphernalia that Mr. Jones and other U.A.W. officials expensed to the union between 2014 and 2018. And the cigar purchases were in turn just a small portion of the roughly $1 million in union money that court filings say U.A.W. officials spent on golf outings, four-figure dinners and monthslong villa rentals during regular retreats in Palm Springs, Calif., and elsewhere.

The scandal comes on top of an investigation into company and union officials’ improper use of millions of dollars from a joint Fiat Chrysler-U.A.W. training center. Mr. Jones’s predecessor as president, Dennis Williams, is accused of encouraging the use of Fiat Chrysler funds meant for worker education as a way to pay for the extravagant spending in Palm Springs and other places.

In direct financial terms, the scandals don’t approach the scale of the corruption that plagued organized labor in the 1960s and ’70s.

But the stakes are nonetheless enormous, given the U.A.W.’s outsize influence over auto manufacturing, a pillar of the United States economy that generates hundreds of billions of dollars in annual revenue and employs hundreds of thousands of workers. The union’s 40-day strike against General Motors this year cost the automaker an estimated $3 billion in profit.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Crime/Corruption; US: Arizona; US: California; US: Michigan; US: New York
KEYWORDS: arizona; boycotts; canada; cybertruck; denniswilliams; detroit; elonmusk; fiatchrysler; ford; garyjones; incometaxes; mexico; michigan; model3; nafta; nealeboudette; nevertrump; nevertrumper; nevertrumpers; noamscheiber; palmsprings; sanctions; tariffs; taxcutsandjobsact; taxreform; tcja; tesla; trade; uaw; unions; usmca
Democrats want get rid of right-to-work laws and push more workers into unions, which would increase the corruption described in this article.
1 posted on 12/26/2019 4:43:18 AM PST by karpov
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To: karpov

Why post crap behind a pay-wall?


2 posted on 12/26/2019 4:51:40 AM PST by Beagle8U (It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you place the blame.)
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To: karpov

Looks like political payback for unions helping to push USMCA. Oh gee, the Times just figured out there’s corruption in unions!


3 posted on 12/26/2019 5:00:07 AM PST by aynrandfreak (Being a Democrat means never having to say you're sorry)
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To: Beagle8U
Why post crap behind a pay-wall?

Since I did post, Freepers can at least read the 300 words I excerpted and get the main point. Presumably that is why FR allows us to post articles from paywalled sources.

4 posted on 12/26/2019 5:01:31 AM PST by karpov
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To: aynrandfreak
A truth that's told with bad intent,
Beats all the lies you can invent.

William Blake

5 posted on 12/26/2019 5:02:43 AM PST by mewzilla (Break out the mustard seeds.)
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To: karpov


6 posted on 12/26/2019 5:04:54 AM PST by Chode (Send bachelors and come heavily armed.)
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To: Beagle8U

You can read up to 5 articles per month for free if you are not a subscriber.


7 posted on 12/26/2019 5:05:09 AM PST by proxy_user
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To: mewzilla

NYT to union chiefs: Stop Trump or else your rank-and-file find out just what all of you get up to with with their union dues...


8 posted on 12/26/2019 5:05:23 AM PST by mewzilla (Break out the mustard seeds.)
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To: karpov

This is almost a caricature of how you’d expect a head union goon to behave.

As for the paywall comment above... The more stories like this see the light of day, the more Dem union lifers flip to our side. Somewhere there’s a lurker reading this site. Stuff like this might lead them to register and join us.


9 posted on 12/26/2019 5:08:37 AM PST by Textide (Lord, grant that I may always be right, for thou knowest I am hard to turn. ~ Scotch-Irish prayer)
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To: karpov

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/columnists/daniel-howes/2019/12/05/uaw-corruption-crisis-gives-gamble-leverage/2619563001/

There are dozens of articles about this without giving NY Slimes hits through their pay-wall.


10 posted on 12/26/2019 5:27:54 AM PST by Beagle8U (It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you place the blame.)
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To: karpov

Use search engine to see if you can find alternative. https://theunionjournal.com/behind-a-u-a-w-crisis-lavish-meals-and-luxury-villas/


11 posted on 12/26/2019 5:37:19 AM PST by GailA (Intractable Pain, a Subset of Chronic pain Last a Life TIME at Level 10.)
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To: aynrandfreak
Looks like political payback for unions helping to push USMCA. Oh gee, the Times just figured out there’s corruption in unions!

Bingo! Now that Unions favor President Trump, expose Union Corruption!

What maroons!

12 posted on 12/26/2019 5:39:59 AM PST by marktwain (President Trump and his supporters are the Resistance. His opponents are the Reactionaries.)
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To: karpov
You mean unions are almost exactly like the big government politicians that support them, and get supported by them? Large, beauracratic organizations which take money from their members, pretty much involuntarily (union dues = taxes), supposedly to “help” them, while in actuality just taking as much as they can for themselves?

What a shock. And the degree of corruption and accountability in both cases seems to be about the same.

13 posted on 12/26/2019 5:50:23 AM PST by Sicon ("All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." - G. Orwell)
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To: karpov

I do not have any issue reading the whole article. I use the ublock plugin and I think that let’s me see the whole article.


14 posted on 12/26/2019 5:54:30 AM PST by minnesota_bound (homeless guy. He just has more money....)
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To: Beagle8U

Bkmrk.


15 posted on 12/26/2019 5:59:46 AM PST by RushIsMyTeddyBear
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To: karpov

The Mafia dines well not news.


16 posted on 12/26/2019 6:21:11 AM PST by Vaduz (women and children to be impacIQ of chimpsted the most.)
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To: AdmSmith; AnonymousConservative; Arthur Wildfire! March; Berosus; Bockscar; cardinal4; ColdOne; ...
Thanks karpov. Apropos of nothing...
The TRUTH About Tesla Model 3 After 1 Year | Snazzy Labs | Published on October 23, 2019

The TRUTH About Tesla Model 3 After 1 Year | Snazzy Labs | Published on October 23, 2019

17 posted on 12/26/2019 9:57:31 AM PST by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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To: karpov

Pay to play once again


18 posted on 12/26/2019 11:09:13 AM PST by ronnie raygun
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