When Biden took office, one of his first acts was the elimination of our border security. Like a power-hungry dictator, Biden simply decided to ignore our immigration laws. His catastrophic border policy resulted in untold millions of unidentified foreign citizens from around the world pouring into our country. Its impact is now being felt in cities across the country. The worst is yet to come. PETER LEMISKA - AND WE'RE ALREADY THERE!!!
Tuesday, April 2, 2019
CORRUPT UNIONS - UNITED AUTO WORKERS V.P. NORWOORD JEWELL PLEADS GUILTY TO SUCKING IN BRIBES AT FIAT CHRYSLER - GENERAL HOLIEFILED SUCKED IN MORE THAN A MILLION IN BRIBES - You wonder what happened to the American middle-class?
“If the UAW was bought, we should get it all back”
Former UAW vice president pleads guilty to conspiracy in bribery scheme
Norwood Jewell, the former vice president of the United Auto Workers, appeared before a federal judge in Detroit Tuesday afternoon and pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to violate labor laws prohibiting companies from paying union officials bribes and union officials from accepting them.
Jewell is the highest-ranking UAW official caught thus far in the corruption case, which involved the payment by Fiat Chrysler executives of more than $1 million in bribes to top UAW negotiators for signing pro-company contracts between 2007 and 2015. Jewell led efforts by the UAW in 2015 to force 37,000 Fiat Chrysler workers to accept sweeping concessions that were also imposed on another 100,000 General Motors and Ford workers.
Corporate money was funneled through the UAW-Chrysler National Training Center, and UAW officials were issued credit cards to keep them “fat, dumb and happy” as they agreed to slash wages and increase the exploitation of workers.
Jewell (left) and his attorney leaving the court house
Federal prosecutors established that Jewell used or authorized other UAW officials to use the NTC-issued credit cards to charge more than $40,000 on travel, upscale restaurants and golf resort accommodations in Palm Springs, California. This included a $6,912.81 dinner at London Chop House in Detroit on September 17, 2015, to celebrate the deal the UAW reached with FCA. The celebration, however, was premature, as FCA workers voted down the sellout deal by a 2-to-1 margin.
Standing before US District Court Judge Paul Borman, Jewell, 61, presented himself as an honest individual who made a few technical mistakes by charging expenses to the NTC instead of the UAW. “I wasn’t perfect. I missed things,” he said.
In his plea agreement, Jewell acknowledged that FCA executives were bribing UAW officials, but it was “never his intent to be influenced in any way by FCA executives,” he told prosecutors. In particular, “his decisions during the 2015 collective bargaining negotiations were not affected by the activity,” Jewell claimed.
In 2015, Jewell earned the hatred of thousands of autoworkers for leading the UAW’s campaign to push through the agreement on behalf of FCA management. “If the membership had known then what they know now,” Angela, a Fiat Chrysler worker from Kokomo, Indiana, said, “they would have stormed the stage, taken him out back and tuned him up. He was so arrogant when he came here with the phony ‘highlights’ and tried to sell us that rotten deal.”
Federal prosecutors are recommending that Jewell only serve 15 months in prison, though he could have received a five-year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine. The wrist-slap punishment may indicate that prosecutors hope to wrap up their case soon and declare their work of “cleaning up” the UAW completed.
The light sentence could also be in exchange for Jewell’s cooperation in fingering even higher-up UAW officials. Jewell, previously identified by prosecutors as “UAW #3,” may have already implicated former UAW president Dennis Williams or current president Gary Jones. Jewell’s administrative assistant, Nancy Johnson, who has already been convicted, told prosecutors that Williams approved the illegal use of NTC cards to cover UAW expenses.
Sterling Heights FCA workers Tuesday
The US Justice Department may impose some type of federal supervision over the UAW, similar to the 1989 takeover of the Teamsters union over racketeering charges. Such a move by the Trump administration would not be to strengthen workers against the auto companies. On the contrary, it could be used force workers into a drawn-out arbitration or mediation process to prevent a strike.
In a statement following Jewell’s plea, the UAW said, “As his plea makes evident today, Norwood Jewell exhibited poor judgment. This is a troubling moment for our organization, and our members are appropriately angry and frustrated.” The union claimed that it was implementing “reforms” that will “make sure that transparency and accountability are at the forefront, and will bring this chapter to a close, once and for all.”
According to its latest filing with the US Labor Department, the UAW has spent at least $1,489,223 on legal fees since 2015 to defend officials caught up in the corruption scandal.
In a press conference outside the courthouse, Jewell’s attorney Michael Manley referred to his client as a “legend” who “has left a great legacy for the UAW.” He claimed Jewell was unsuspectingly thrust into the corrupt atmosphere. “When you get put into a cesspool, you’re destined to fail,” he said.
When this reporter pointed out that Jewell was on the payroll of FCA when he and other UAW officials imposed the 2015 contract on Fiat Chrysler workers, the lawyer said that was “absurd.” He also refused to say whether Jewell had identified who “UAW #2” and “UAW #1” were, saying only that the plea agreement did not compel Jewell to cooperate further.
As shop chairman of Local 659 at GM’s Flint Metal Center in 1998, Jewell sold out the 54-day strike, paving the way for the spinoff of GM’s Delphi parts division and the destruction of the jobs and pensions of tens of thousands of workers. From 2010 to 2014, he headed UAW Region 1-C and was reportedly a political kingmaker for Democratic Party whose politicians handed GM millions in tax cuts while turning a blind eye to the economic and environmental destruction it caused in Flint and other cities. The same UAW-endorsed candidates were deeply involved in the lead poisoning of the city.
On Tuesday, a group of UAW retirees gathered around the Sitdowners Memorial Park to demand that Jewell’s name be struck from the monument honoring the 1936–37 plant occupation that established the UAW as a mass industrial union. They held signs reading “No entitlement to the corruptors” and “If you did the crime you do the time.”
Fiat Chrysler workers at the Sterling Heights Assembly Plant in suburban Detroit spoke to the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter about the concessions Jewell and the UAW imposed. “I say, bring back the pensions and start all over before the 2011 and 2015 contracts,” a veteran SHAP worker said. “If the UAW was bought, we should get it all back.” In the upcoming contract fight, he said, “It will be hard to get [the concessions] back, but if we strike it will send a message.”
A younger second-tier worker said he hates that the 2015 contract lifted the cap on the percentage of second-tier workers who make half the wage of older workers and must work eight years to “max out.” The UAW, he said, “was all in on it. There was supposed to be a 25 percent limit, and everyone hired over that was supposed to have been brought up to traditional pay, but they screwed us.”
Angela, the Kokomo worker, concluded, “We have to recognize there is no way we can get a decent contract from the UAW, which is in bed with management and taking bribes. The UAW officials act as if we work for them, like we have two bosses.
“The only way forward is to unite like we haven’t done in decades and be prepared to fight like they did in the 1930s. We have to recognize we are the most powerful class and not succumb to fear and the way the powers-that-be divide us, whether it’s getting us to hate Mexican workers or turning high seniority workers against TPTs and lower-wage workers and vice versa. The Mexican workers have shown us the way by organizing independent of the unions and recognizing there is no difference between the union bosses and the company bosses.
“We have to catch up on the learning curve. There is no time to waste, the contracts are only a few months away. It is most important to unite, like we have not done in a very, very long time.”
GM Executives Closed Ohio Plant Despite Concessions from U.S. Workers: ‘We Did Everything They Want’
Executives at General Motors (GM) closed the Lordstown, Ohio, assembly plant last month — resulting in the immediate layoff of about 1,600 American workers — despite major concessions from the United Auto Workers (UAW), new details reveal.
Last month, GM CEO Mary Barra closed the Lordstown plant, a decision expected to result in the layoff of more than 8,000 American workers in the area, and allegedly blamed the UAW for the plant’s closure in a phone conversation with President Trump.
“Just spoke to Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors about the Lordstown Ohio plant … I asked her to sell it or do something quickly. She blamed the UAW Union — I don’t care, I just want it open!” Trump wrote on Twitter.
New details from Bloomberg News reveal a very different story. Documents note that the UAW agreed to make nearly $120 million a year in concessions to keep the Lordstown plant open in 2017 and were stunned by the announcement in late 2018 that the Lordstown plant would eventually close.
Dan Morgan, shop chairman of UAW Local 1112, detailed the concessions to Bloomberg News that GM workers at the Lordstown plant were willing and ready to make before Barra decided to close the plant altogether.
“Everything they asked us to do, we did,” Morgan said. “And still, we don’t have a product to build.”
The UAW concessions to GM included:
Saving $3 million a year by merging UAW Locals 1112 and 1714
Agreeing to outsource non-assembly jobs to lower-wage workers
Agreeing to allow GM to cut the number of skilled jobs at the plant in half
Allowing GM to use contractors to repair vehicles at the plant
Despite “all of these things” being “very unpopular” with union workers, Morgan told Bloomberg News the UAW agreed to the concessions in July 2017 with the expectation that the new plans would go into effect in January 2018.
Instead, Morgan said, in November 2018 GM executives announced that the Lordstown plant would be idled, along with GM’s two plants in Michigan and a plant in Maryland.
Longtime GM worker Sonja Smith, who worked at the Lordstown plant for 24 years, suggested to Bloomberg News the lack of loyalty the corporation has to its employees.
“We did everything they want,” Smith said. “This is their payback.”
While GM lays off thousands of American workers, its production in Mexico and China is ramping up. Specifically, GM is looking to manufacture an electric Cadillac in China and continue manufacturing its Envision compact vehicle in China.
The made-in-Mexico Chevrolet Blazer will soon arrive in U.S. markets. Last year, GM became the largest automaker in Mexico, as it has cut jobs in America and increased production to Mexico.
Offshoring production to Mexico has proven cheaper for GM executives, as American workers earn $30 an hour while Mexican workers earn about $3 an hour, a 90 percent cut to wages that widens the corporation’s profit margins. Barra, for example, continues to rake in about $22 million despite the corporation’s layoffs of thousands of U.S. workers.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
Corruption probe engulfs top UAW executives
Former United Auto Workers Vice President Norwood Jewell is expected to plead guilty today in a US District Court in Detroit for accepting tens of thousands of dollars in bribes from Fiat Chrysler executives while he headed up the union’s contract negotiations for 37,000 FCA workers in 2015.
Jewell will be the highest-ranking UAW official convicted so far in the illegal scheme that dates back at least to Jewell’s predecessor, General Holiefield, who took more than $1 million in bribes for signing pro-company contracts in 2007, 2009 and 2011.
The four-year deal Jewell “negotiated” in 2015 set the pattern for all 140,000 General Motors, Ford and Fiat Chrysler workers. The agreement maintained the two-tier wage system, continued the stagnation in workers’ real income and expanded the number of temporary part-time employees (TPTs), who pay union dues but have no rights.
The sellout deal led to countless injuries from speedup and exhausting schedules, along with other tragedies such as the October 20, 2017, death of Jacoby Hennings, a 21-year-old TPT who reportedly took his own life after a still unexplained dispute with union officials at Ford’s Woodhaven Stamping Plant, just outside of Detroit.
According to news reports, Jewell is cooperating with federal investigators and could soon implicate other top union officials, including former UAW President Dennis Williams and current President Gary Jones. In previous plea deals, UAW officials said Williams authorized the use of company money, funneled through the UAW-Chrysler National Training Center (NTC) in Detroit, to fund union officials’ air travel, golf vacations and expensive dinners.
Even more damning information may emerge from a related civil case brought by attorneys for the UAW-Chrysler National Training Center, who claim that union and company officials were unsuspecting victims of a few bad apples and the NTC deserves restitution. Calling their bluff, attorneys for the former FCA head of labor relations, Alphons Iacobelli, who is already serving a prison term, are seeking to depose Williams and other UAW officials to show how they personally benefited from the payments and knew that payments “were made in the ordinary course of business of the NTC.”
The attorneys point to the 7 percent “administrative fee” that Williams’ predecessor Ron Gettelfinger demanded from the NTC annually “for the salaries and benefits payable to the UAW Leadership on the NTC payroll,” along with their friends and relatives who were paid for dummy jobs at the training center.
This is not a matter of the corruption of a few individuals. Jewell did not act alone when he led the UAW’s campaign of lies, intimidation and vote fraud to impose the 2015 sellout contract on workers, who had rebelled and defeated the original offer. The bribing of the UAW with both legal and illegal payments has been the “ordinary course of business” since the UAW first joined Chrysler’s board of directors in 1979–80.
The joint training centers are only one of many corporatist schemes through which the UAW and the other official unions, based on nationalism and the defense of capitalism, have been integrated into the structure of corporate management and the state.
The UAW is not a “union” in any meaningful sense of the term. Along with the AFL-CIO as a whole, it is a completely bureaucratic and undemocratic organization controlled by corrupt executives who are in the top five or even one percent of income earners. Their sole role is to suppress the class struggle and to do what they can to prevent any organized opposition of workers to social inequality and the global restructuring of the auto industry, which is now entering a new and even more brutal phase.
The real relationship between the UAW and autoworkers is demonstrated by the fact that the organization prospered and saw its assets increase even as its dues-paying membership fell from 1.5 million to 395,000. Last year, the UAW lost another 35,000 members, but according to its latest filing with the US Labor Department, its assets are worth over $1.1 billion.
With 150,000 GM, Ford and Fiat Chrysler workers facing a new contract battle this summer, workers are determined to reverse the decades of UAW-backed concessions, particularly since the automakers have had a decade-long string of record profits and are spending billions on stock buybacks and dividends for their richest shareholders.
As they have done for decades, the UAW and the auto companies are using plant closings, layoffs and slowing sales to beat back resistance to their plans to rid the factories of higher-paid senior workers and convert the workforce into largely low-paid temps. This was signaled by the “Super Competitive Operating Agreement” the UAW imposed on Lordstown, Ohio, workers in 2017, which allowed GM to bring in contractors, temps and other low-paid staff to save $118 million a year. This blackmail deal, however, did nothing to save the plant, which was closed last month.
Autoworkers know the UAW is a bribed tool of management. They know the contracts the union rammed through in 2015 were the products of corruption, conspiracy and illegality and should be considered null and void. It is one thing, however, to be disgusted with the UAW and another to build a new leadership and new organizations to unite autoworkers and wage a counter-offensive. But that is exactly the challenge workers confront.
There is no time to lose. Workers should take the initiative now to begin building a network of rank-and-file factory committees in all the major plants. The conduct of the contract struggle must be taken out of the hands of the UAW. These committees should formulate the demands that autoworkers and their families need, including a 40 percent raise, the abolition of the two-tier wage system and the conversion of all temporary and contract workers into full-timers.
Workers must be united to stop the plant closings, demand the rehiring of all laid-off and victimized workers, and fight for workers’ control over production and industrial democracy.
This year has already seen the rise of working class resistance all over the world. In Matamoros, Mexico, auto parts workers have carried out a courageous revolt, not only against US- and other foreign-owned sweatshops, but also against the unions that enforce slave-labor conditions. This coincides with the rebellion of US teachers, the “yellow vest” protests in France and the uprisings in Algeria and other countries in Africa.
The assault on jobs and living standards by the global corporations and capitalist governments all over the world must be countered by an internationally coordinated offensive by the working class. Mass social and industrial action must be fused with a socialist program, including the transformation of the giant industries into public utilities collectively owned and democratically controlled by the working class.
WALL STREET,
GLOBALIST, BILLIONAIRES and the OPEN BORDERS ADVOCATES FINISH OFF
MIDDLE-AMERICA.
Ryan asked how much
longer will the working-class not matter “because it’s becoming impossible for
them to keep their nose above water.”
“Where’s the social compact that we used to have between
corporations and their workers? Where’s the social contract between the
government and our workers?” asked Ryan. “I mean,
it’s like the worker — there’s always an excuse that the worker is going to get
hammered, that they’re going to lose their pensions, they’re going to lose
their jobs, they’re going to have to move. Meanwhile, corporations, in this instance,
General Motors got $157 million in tax cut just last year. I mean how much
longer are we going to do this to where the worker doesn’t matter? And I hope
this is a real wake-up call for us to say, workers, white, brown, black, gay,
straight, working-class people have got to come together because it’s becoming
impossible for them to keep their nose above water anymore.” REP. TIM RYAN
GENERAL MOTORS DUMPS
THOUSANDS OF WORKERS AND CLOSES PLANTS-Stockholders celebrate!
"It
identifies socialism with proposals for mild social reform such as
“Medicare for all,” raised and increasingly abandoned by a section of the
Democratic Party. It cites Milton Friedman and Margaret Thatcher to
promote the virtues of “economic freedom,” i.e., the unrestrained
operation of the capitalist market, and to denounce all social reforms,
business regulations, tax increases or anything else that impinges on
the oligarchy’s self-enrichment."
“The
yearly income of a typical US household dropped by a massive 12 percent,
or $6,400, in the six years between 2007 and 2013. This is just one of the
findings of the 2013 Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances released
Thursday, which documentsa sharp decline in working class living standards and
a further concentration of wealth in the hands of the rich and the
super-rich.”
"The American phenomenon of record stock values fueling
an ever greater concentration of wealth at the very top of
society, while the economy is starved of productive investment,
the social infrastructure crumbles, and working class
living standards are driven down by entrenched unemployment, wage-cutting
and government austerity policies, is part of a broader global
process."
"A
defining expression of this crisis is the dominance of financial speculation
and parasitism, to the point where a narrow international financial aristocracy
plunders society’s resources in order to further enrich itself."
Jewell (left) and his attorney leaving the court house
Federal prosecutors established that Jewell used or authorized other UAW officials to use the NTC-issued credit cards to charge more than $40,000 on travel, upscale restaurants and golf resort accommodations in Palm Springs, California. This included a $6,912.81 dinner at London Chop House in Detroit on September 17, 2015, to celebrate the deal the UAW reached with FCA. The celebration, however, was premature, as FCA workers voted down the sellout deal by a 2-to-1 margin.
Standing before US District Court Judge Paul Borman, Jewell, 61, presented himself as an honest individual who made a few technical mistakes by charging expenses to the NTC instead of the UAW. “I wasn’t perfect. I missed things,” he said.
In his plea agreement, Jewell acknowledged that FCA executives were bribing UAW officials, but it was “never his intent to be influenced in any way by FCA executives,” he told prosecutors. In particular, “his decisions during the 2015 collective bargaining negotiations were not affected by the activity,” Jewell claimed.
In 2015, Jewell earned the hatred of thousands of autoworkers for leading the UAW’s campaign to push through the agreement on behalf of FCA management. “If the membership had known then what they know now,” Angela, a Fiat Chrysler worker from Kokomo, Indiana, said, “they would have stormed the stage, taken him out back and tuned him up. He was so arrogant when he came here with the phony ‘highlights’ and tried to sell us that rotten deal.”
Federal prosecutors are recommending that Jewell only serve 15 months in prison, though he could have received a five-year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine. The wrist-slap punishment may indicate that prosecutors hope to wrap up their case soon and declare their work of “cleaning up” the UAW completed.
The light sentence could also be in exchange for Jewell’s cooperation in fingering even higher-up UAW officials. Jewell, previously identified by prosecutors as “UAW #3,” may have already implicated former UAW president Dennis Williams or current president Gary Jones. Jewell’s administrative assistant, Nancy Johnson, who has already been convicted, told prosecutors that Williams approved the illegal use of NTC cards to cover UAW expenses.
Sterling Heights FCA workers Tuesday
The US Justice Department may impose some type of federal supervision over the UAW, similar to the 1989 takeover of the Teamsters union over racketeering charges. Such a move by the Trump administration would not be to strengthen workers against the auto companies. On the contrary, it could be used force workers into a drawn-out arbitration or mediation process to prevent a strike.
In a statement following Jewell’s plea, the UAW said, “As his plea makes evident today, Norwood Jewell exhibited poor judgment. This is a troubling moment for our organization, and our members are appropriately angry and frustrated.” The union claimed that it was implementing “reforms” that will “make sure that transparency and accountability are at the forefront, and will bring this chapter to a close, once and for all.”
According to its latest filing with the US Labor Department, the UAW has spent at least $1,489,223 on legal fees since 2015 to defend officials caught up in the corruption scandal.
In a press conference outside the courthouse, Jewell’s attorney Michael Manley referred to his client as a “legend” who “has left a great legacy for the UAW.” He claimed Jewell was unsuspectingly thrust into the corrupt atmosphere. “When you get put into a cesspool, you’re destined to fail,” he said.
When this reporter pointed out that Jewell was on the payroll of FCA when he and other UAW officials imposed the 2015 contract on Fiat Chrysler workers, the lawyer said that was “absurd.” He also refused to say whether Jewell had identified who “UAW #2” and “UAW #1” were, saying only that the plea agreement did not compel Jewell to cooperate further.
As shop chairman of Local 659 at GM’s Flint Metal Center in 1998, Jewell sold out the 54-day strike, paving the way for the spinoff of GM’s Delphi parts division and the destruction of the jobs and pensions of tens of thousands of workers. From 2010 to 2014, he headed UAW Region 1-C and was reportedly a political kingmaker for Democratic Party whose politicians handed GM millions in tax cuts while turning a blind eye to the economic and environmental destruction it caused in Flint and other cities. The same UAW-endorsed candidates were deeply involved in the lead poisoning of the city.
On Tuesday, a group of UAW retirees gathered around the Sitdowners Memorial Park to demand that Jewell’s name be struck from the monument honoring the 1936–37 plant occupation that established the UAW as a mass industrial union. They held signs reading “No entitlement to the corruptors” and “If you did the crime you do the time.”
Fiat Chrysler workers at the Sterling Heights Assembly Plant in suburban Detroit spoke to the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter about the concessions Jewell and the UAW imposed. “I say, bring back the pensions and start all over before the 2011 and 2015 contracts,” a veteran SHAP worker said. “If the UAW was bought, we should get it all back.” In the upcoming contract fight, he said, “It will be hard to get [the concessions] back, but if we strike it will send a message.”
A younger second-tier worker said he hates that the 2015 contract lifted the cap on the percentage of second-tier workers who make half the wage of older workers and must work eight years to “max out.” The UAW, he said, “was all in on it. There was supposed to be a 25 percent limit, and everyone hired over that was supposed to have been brought up to traditional pay, but they screwed us.”
Angela, the Kokomo worker, concluded, “We have to recognize there is no way we can get a decent contract from the UAW, which is in bed with management and taking bribes. The UAW officials act as if we work for them, like we have two bosses.
“The only way forward is to unite like we haven’t done in decades and be prepared to fight like they did in the 1930s. We have to recognize we are the most powerful class and not succumb to fear and the way the powers-that-be divide us, whether it’s getting us to hate Mexican workers or turning high seniority workers against TPTs and lower-wage workers and vice versa. The Mexican workers have shown us the way by organizing independent of the unions and recognizing there is no difference between the union bosses and the company bosses.
“We have to catch up on the learning curve. There is no time to waste, the contracts are only a few months away. It is most important to unite, like we have not done in a very, very long time.”
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