MEXICO = DRUGS!
Desert towns in California have seen a dramatic increase of illegal marijuana plantations, operating through means of water theft, human trafficking, and violence.
How Foreign Drug Operations Are Taking Over California’s Desert Towns: Jorge Ventura
Another UAW executive charged with stealing dues money, as union announces “re-vote” on defeated Deere contract
Late Friday night, the United Auto Workers announced that it was having John Deere workers re-vote on the same agreement just rejected by 10,000 striking workers, with “modest modifications.” The announcement is a desperate effort to ram through a concessions contract that has been defeated twice by workers.
The latest rotten maneuver takes place as the corruption scandal engulfing the UAW is expanding.
The indictment this week of Timothy Edmunds, secretary-treasurer of United Auto Workers Local 412, brings to 16 the number of UAW and corporate officials prosecuted since 2017 in the ongoing federal investigation.
Edmunds has been charged with the theft of $2 million in members’ dues money. He allegedly used a union credit card to fund his gambling habit, as well as the purchase of cars, guns and child support payments. Prosecutors said he was a regular at the Detroit Greektown Casino, putting more than $16 million in play—betting over $10,000 a day—between 2016 and 2020.
All of this supposedly escaped the notice of UAW financial officers, including current UAW President Ray Curry, who served as international secretary-treasurer between 2017 and 2021.
In a report released November 11, Neil Barofsky, the federal monitor overseeing the UAW, revealed that Curry himself had been investigated for taking college football playoff championship tickets worth $2,000 from a vendor, despite UAW rules barring the acceptance of such gifts. If this is all Curry has been investigated for, it is only because the federal oversight of the UAW is aimed at trying to salvage the credibility of the organization.
Two former UAW presidents, Dennis Williams and Gary Jones, were convicted and sent to prison for embezzlement of union funds. Curry’s predecessor, Rory Gamble, had also been suspected of taking kickbacks or bribes, but he was not indicted. Investigations are pending against no less than 15 other UAW officials.
Despite the government’s settlement with the union and the appointment of an independent monitor earlier this year, the UAW remains a cesspool of corruption. Every additional indictment, conviction and exposure only confirms what workers already know, that the UAW is organized and run by an apparatus that benefits from workers’ exploitation, takes bribes from the companies and exists for the sole purpose of suppressing the class struggle.
The “re-vote” at Deere is only its latest attempt by the UAW to force through an agreement opposed by workers. The UAW carried out a similar operation in the spring and summer. Nearly 3,000 workers at Volvo Trucks struck for several weeks and voted down three UAW sellout agreements, before the UAW claimed that a re-vote on the third contract passed by 17 votes.
At Dana, an auto parts maker and Deere supplier, workers almost unanimously rejected a deal pushed by the UAW and the United Steelworkers union earlier this fall. The UAW and USW are responding by keeping workers on the job under day-to-day contract extensions for weeks before ramming through a largely similar deal using lies and intimidation.
Workers’ anger has been further fueled by the reality that in the midst of a deadly pandemic they have been forced by management and the UAW into unsafe factories to carry out nonessential production. Meanwhile, top UAW officials have remained safely at home drawing their six-figure salaries during the entire health disaster.
A faction of the ruling class led by the Biden administration sees the unions as critical instruments for defending big business and suppressing the class struggle. The ruling class is well aware and fearful of growing support for rank-and-file committees in auto plants established with the help of the World Socialist Web Site and Socialist Equality Party, including at Volvo Trucks, Dana and Deere.
The Democrats have the support of organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America, Labor Notes and Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), which are dedicated to promoting the stranglehold of the UAW and other corporatist unions over the working class. These groups are promoting the illusion that the UAW can be reformed by means of a government-mandated referendum.
Although the present system of electing officers by means of delegates hand-chosen by the union apparatus is undemocratic, the campaign promoting the direct elections is little more than an attempt to put lipstick on the giant, corrupt pig that is the UAW.
The top-to-bottom corruption that has been exposed in the UAW is not an individual, but a social phenomenon, which cannot be eliminated by the replacement of some corrupt officers. It flows more fundamentally from the transformation decades ago of the unions into corporatist appendages of management.
While the trade union bureaucracies were hardly strangers to graft and underhanded dealings for much of their existence in the 20th century, union corruption assumed a systemic and pathological character beginning in the 1980s. Based on their pro-capitalist and nationalist program, the unions universally responded to the globalization of production by lining up with “their” corporate bosses against overseas competition.
UAW membership has collapsed by 1 million since the early 1980s, and workers have suffered an endless series of concession contracts, the closure of factories, the decimation of communities and the destruction of working conditions. UAW finances, however, were largely unaffected. The union’s assets remain at about the $1 billion level, funding a staff of hundreds of functionaries who draw salaries well in excess of $100,000 annually.
During 2020, the first year of the pandemic, UAW net assets rose to $1.026 billion, up from $994 million in 2019, with revenues topping $228 million. Curry, then still UAW secretary-treasurer, pulled in $236,000 in officially reported salary and expenses. The UAW paid out a total of $90.3 million on “representational activities,” salaries of officers and staff.
The building of new organizations of working class struggle must be combined with the development of a mass movement to put an end to the pandemic, mounting economic insecurity and the prospect of war, fighting for the reorganization of social and economic life on a socialist basis to meet human need, not private profit.
Dana fires temps en masse in apparent retaliation for leak that revealed they were making $25 per hour
Temporary workers at Dana’s Louisville, Kentucky plant report that the company fired temporary workers en masse due to the fact that they shared their $25 per hour pay stubs with full-time coworkers.
A temporary worker told the World Socialist Web Site, “Many of us people from the contracting agency were let go. No reason was given. There was no heads-up from the staffing center today. Nothing. Presumably because they caught on to the whistleblowing and did a blanket sweep firing of any of us it could have been. We have no regrets. I'm curious to see how far people in power can pull through.”
Last week, Louisville workers reported to the World Socialist Web Site that temporary workers were brought in to the plant at $25 per hour. In order to continue to keep the flow of parts to the large automakers, at least two agencies were used. Workers said that non-disclosure agreements (NDA) were given with a bolded line instructing them to keep their wages private.
The revelations last week provoked outrage from workers, who had just been bullied by the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the United Steelworkers (USW) into accepting a sellout agreement with wages for full-time workers which will top out at only $22.50 by 2026. The leak showed that the unions had not only forced through a contract with wage increases even below the market rate. It also demonstrated that the conduct of the unions during the “negotiations” and the vote, where workers were not even provided with copies of the contract, met the legal definition of bad faith because they had withheld critical information from them, meaning the contract ought to be considered null and void.
Dana workers voiced their opposition to the NDA and the $25 per hour wage. A worker said, “I agree with you on that [that the tentative agreement was made in bad faith],” a Louisville worker said. “We have about 40 temps in our plant making $25 an hour from two separate temp agencies. I found an ad last week about a job for $25 an hour. I called the temp agency, and they confirmed that it was for Dana.”
Management at Dana’s Fort Wayne, Indiana plant which, along with Louisville, voted down the national and local agreements has also recently gone on a hiring binge, bringing in roughly 60 temporary workers. One production worker said the tension between workers and the United Steelworkers is growing. “People are pissed. Nobody is telling us anything. We are not hearing anything about the local agreement.” He described how management complained since early May 2021 of not being able to hire workers. “All of a sudden about 60 people have been hired since a week or so ago?
“A temp was going through his phone and the temp agency said, ‘Dana wants 30 more [temps]’,” one legacy full-time worker told the WSWS. According to a screenshot of a text from one of the temp agencies at Fort Wayne, all temporary workers with at least a month on the job have had their wages increased immediately to $18. It was not confirmed if these workers were given similar NDAs to those at Louisville.
Moreover, given the fact that the status of Fort Wayne in the aftermath of the vote is still up in the air and the USW may call a strike limited to this plant, the sudden hiring surge may indicate that management is taking measures to secure scab labor in the event of a strike.
Another worker stated that workers from Dana’s Humboldt plant were brought to Fort Wayne on a volunteer basis. “[A] Humboldt employee just told me he is making $21.50 an hour. They all seem to be on day shift only, not sure where all the others are at.”
A week after the announcement of vote counts, the language of the contract still has not been seen by workers, who were forced to vote on the basis of self-serving, piecemeal packet “highlights” distributed by the locals instead.
Fort Wayne workers are still being kept in the dark about the status of their plant. “We are supposedly going to hear from the international late this week on our local,” one worker said. “Several members have opted out of the union. Some of these sell-out committee reps have been lying to members. They are telling workers that you have to wait until your anniversary date to opt out, and that if you ever want to opt in, you have to pay back dues. I haven’t seen or heard anything out of the district reps. The union president and committee chairman are the biggest offenders.”
A legacy production worker expressed the growing opposition against the UAW and USW. “We need to lose the UAW and USW. I’m not sure what they’ll do next since we voted it down. The membership, not Millsap or the bureaucracy, should be making decisions. We need a new organization with you [the WSWS].
“The USW threatened us that if we get rid of the union, that we won’t have representation for one year. There’s so much money being made by the USW and UAW. Doust told us about a stipend for a strike package, which is nothing! I’m all for the rank-and-file committee! Time for them [USW] to go.”
To join the Dana Workers Rank-and-File Committee, email DanaWRFC@gmail.com, text (248) 602–0936 or complete the form below.
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