Rome Burns, UAW Fiddles

Suppose your organization was losing members at the rate of 20% per year.  Suppose your remaining members were suffering from layoffs, concessions, and cuts.  Suppose you had $925 million dollars in your strike fund and another $89 million as an emergency fund

Would you be spending $318,498 in one year for "conference briefcases, portfolios, and pens"???

That's just one of the ways the UAW spent members' money on perks and parties.  It's all there in the 2005 Annual Report filed with the Department of Labor (LM-2).

Here's some more: 

1. $22,000 for souvenir key chains.
2. $5,386 for luggage tags.
3. $30,544 to cancel a leadership meeting at the Hyatt Regency in Dearborn.
4. $12,523 for bowling towels.
5. $63,473 at a golf resort in Branson, MO, including $6,324 for golf.

Ron Gettlefinger tells UAW leadership that times are tough, and that the road ahead will be an uphill battle.  To the delegates in Las Vegas -- a great place to save money -- he says "The fact is that a union of 600,000 active members can’t operate the same way it did years ago as a union of more than a million members... We have a responsibility and, more than that, a moral obligation to use our dues money efficiently and prudently."

Maybe that's why his organization spent $66,032 for a leadership conference at Palm Springs Riviera Resort in Palm Springs, CA, and $10,577 at Thunderbowl Lanes in Allen Park.

If you're not sick yet, you can read more in the article "UAW pays for fun, perks" by Jennifer Dixon in the Detroit Free Press.

Hey Ron -- instead of strikes, organizing, and perks, how about using some of that cool $1 billion to retrain UAW members who have lost their jobs in an automotive industry your organization brought to its knees?