President
Ray Curry
of the United Auto Workers is “committed to transparency” and rooting out corruption. The union’s court-appointed monitor tells a distinct story.
Neil Barofsky,
whom the Justice Department tapped to watch the UAW as a part of a settlement with the union, filed a standing report with the courtroom this week that claims the union’s cooperativeness has “veered sharply in the wrong direction.”
The settlement got here after a yearslong investigation discovered prime union officers responsible of embezzling a whole lot of hundreds of members’ dues cash and different funds to bankroll leaders’ opulent life. Court paperwork describe events with top-shelf liquor and stays at five-star resorts.
Mr. Barofsky’s oversight is supposed to deliver the UAW’s tradition of corruption to an finish. His report means that the union has a option to go.
The report particulars how the union failed to supply the related info wanted to finish the investigation. Mr. Barofsky notes that union leaders have been nervous this info would turn out to be public. The officers additionally slowed “production of other investigative materials,” and “declined to timely share certain information about . . . efforts to implement compliance reforms.”
Further, the report says, they labored to hide an investigation into the “mishandling of a sum of cash” by a senior official. This “pattern of uncooperative conduct” finally compelled a gathering with the Justice Department.
Despite these roadblocks, Mr. Barofsky experiences that 5 new investigations have been opened since his preliminary report in November 2021. All instructed, he’s engaged on 19 investigations into alleged unhealthy actors on the union. His courtroom appointment offers him the ability to “investigate possible fraud or corruption within the union” and self-discipline UAW officers and members.
In response to the report, the union says it stays dedicated to “robust reforms.” The report does acknowledge that the union “appears to be” again on monitor after a lot intervention. But Mr. Barofsky has expressed “optimism about the UAW’s cooperation” earlier than, solely to be dissatisfied.
This replace couldn’t come at a worse time for the United Auto Workers. Next week in Detroit, the union will maintain its first constitutional conference because the 2020 settlement. Members of the union’s International Executive Board will likely be chosen by direct election, quite than the earlier delegate system that favored union insiders. More than 60% of members voted to make the change to this “one member, one vote” system. Several have launched campaigns to problem the union’s management.
That problem seems to be well-deserved. The cultural change Mr. Barofsky seeks has but to reach, and members could rightly determine that new management is important to realize it.
Mr. Saltsman is managing director of the Employment Policies Institute. Ms. Bozzello is communications director on the Center for Union Facts.
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Appeared within the July 22, 2022, print version.
Source: www.wsj.com”