UAW executives accepted bribes “to take company-friendly positions”
By Joseph Kishore
21 August 2017
21 August 2017
Another senior executive in the United Auto
Workers accepted bribes from a Fiat Chrysler (FCA) official, according to
charges filed on Friday as part of an expanding corruption scandal. FCA Vice
President for Employee Development Alphons Iacobelli funneled more than $4.5
million to UAW executives to encourage them “to take company-friendly
positions,” according to a court documented submitted by federal prosecutors.
The new charges name retired UAW Associate
Director Virdell King, who worked as a senior official in the UAW Chrysler
Department between 2008 and 2016, when she retired. King joins the late General
Holiefield, a former UAW vice president and lead negotiator with Chrysler, and
Holiefield’s widow, Monica Morgan, in being directly implicated in the scandal.
Both King and Holiefield participated in the UAW national negotiating
committee.
Iacobelli was the top FCA official in charge of
negotiations with the UAW during the 2009 contract modifications, as part of
the Obama administration’s restructuring of the auto industry, and the 2011
contract.
The multimillion-dollar bribery scheme exposes
the UAW as a corrupt agent of corporate management, which has worked to impose
massive concession contracts at FCA, General Motors and Ford. The contracts
agreed by the UAW, and forced through with lies and fraud, must be considered
nullified by the corruption revelations.
King allegedly participated in a scheme to use
credit cards tied to the UAW-Chrysler National Training Center (NTC) to
purchase designer shoes, clothing, jewelry and luggage. She also made $40,000
in purchases for other executives, though the UAW claims that these officials
were not aware that their lavish gifts were purchased with money that was
supposedly dedicated to worker education.
The gifts include a shotgun purchased for $2,180
presented to the current UAW Vice President overseeing relations with FCA,
Norwood Jewell, who is widely hated among autoworkers at FCA.
Both Morgan and Iacobelli were arraigned and
released on bond in hearings earlier this month. Another FCA official, Jerome
Durden, pleaded guilty on August 8 to conspiracy and preparing false tax
returns in connection with the scandal.
In a desperate scramble to contain worker anger,
UAW president Dennis Williams has claimed that the bribes and payouts have had
no effect on the “collective bargaining process,” and that top UAW officials
were not aware of the bribery. In fact, according to the federal charges,
Williams’ predecessor, Bob King, confronted Holiefield and Iacobelli in 2011, warning
that the selection of Morgan as a vendor for the NTC could end up with the two
of them going to jail.
Revealed in the scandal is just a glimpse of the
incestuous financial relationship between the UAW and the Big Three auto
companies. The NTC is one of many company-UAW arrangements set up in the 1980s
and in the ensuing decades to cement this relationship, as the UAW collaborated
in the destruction of hundreds of thousands of jobs and the tearing up of all
previous gains won by autoworkers.
Holiefield, appointed as a UAW vice president in
2006, was one product of this corporate-UAW nexus. He helped “negotiate”
contracts that included poverty-level second-tier wages, an end to the
eight-hour day through the institutionalization of the Alternative Work
Schedule, and to income protection for laid-off workers and retiree health care
benefits paid by the company. Many of these concessions were imposed in 2011,
in close collaboration with the Obama administration.
When Holiefield died in 2015, FCA CEO Sergio
Marchionne praised him for being a “true partner” who helped “guide the company
through one of its most difficult periods in its history.”
During the last contract votes, in 2015, the UAW
used a combination of lies and outright fraud to ram through agreements in the
face of mass opposition from autoworkers. This included the stuffing of ballots
at the last local to vote on the Ford contract to ensure a 51 percent “yes”
vote. The UAW also overrode a “no” vote by skilled trades workers at General
Motors, in violation of the union’s own bylaws.
During the contract
votes, the World Socialist
Web Site Autoworker Newsletter was read widely by tens of
thousands of autoworkers, many of whom supported its call for a break with the
UAW and the formation of rank-and-file factory committees. Williams responded
to the initial defeat of the contract at FCA, overseen by Jewell, by denouncing
“outside groups” that “like to stir people up” for spreading opposition.
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