JUST HOW MUCH IS THE UAW STRIKE FUND WORTH? – By Daniel Boguslaw (The Intercept) / Nov 16, 2022
Ahead of a historic United Auto Workers election, leadership gives rank-and-file members an incomplete view of union finances.
$30,000 AT DETROIT’S Greektown Casino, restaurant tabs approaching $7,000, top shelf cigars, Louis Roederer Cristal champagne, firearms, a $1 million lake house, and, of course, cocaine. This is just a partial accounting of the lavish spending that drew federal prosecutors to charge over a dozen United Auto Workers officials — including two former presidents — over the past five years with embezzling union funds and money laundering. UAW rank-and-file members are currently voting on whether to replace UAW President Ray Curry and allies of now-imprisoned officials in the incumbent Administration Caucus; reformers are running under the banner of UAW Members United on a platform of “No concessions. No corruption. No tiers.”
The election, which ends this month, will have an outsize impact on next year’s contract negotiations between workers and the largest auto manufacturers in America. But an internal union audit obtained by The Intercept shows that current UAW leadership gave its members only a partial view of the value of UAW’s assets — including the strike and defense fund used to pay striking workers’ wages — ahead of the upcoming election.
The audit, which was prepared by Calibre CPA Group and covers the first half of 2021, records a difference of hundreds of millions of dollars between the total cost of assets held by the UAW — including the strike fund — and the appreciated value of those assets. The market value of the investments was not reported to rank-and-file members in the financial report of the secretary-treasurer provided during July’s union convention, or in the financial summary provided to membership in the union’s 2022 magazine. Instead, the report distributed at the convention, which goes through December 2021, presents investments at their original cost basis, meaning that a significant bump in the market was not reflected in valuation of the assets.
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