Unintentionally, obviously. As in the Ford employees are on the clock and off gallivanting around at the same time. Anyway, watching this Rescue4 (WDIV) TV investigation, you can almost hear the station’s Program Director. “Jesus Christ! Jesus H. Christ! You can’t air that! Union bosses getting paid for working while they’re, what, getting haircuts and shopping for booze? Oh wait. This IS good. Hmmm. OK. Kiss their ass. Ford, I mean. A lot. Talk about the turnaround. What’s that electronic thing called? Stink? Slinky? Whatever. And make sure you say that most Ford workers don’t do this. Get the Harbour report guy. THEN screw ’em. Hehehehe.” The screwees in question: “six-figure” union chairman Jim Modzalewski and “union security rep” Ron Seroka. If you think this is an isolated incident, chances are you’re too good for this world.
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Is anybody really surprised?
Really? I mean… REALLY?
This shows how, in the UAW, “all are equal, but some are more equal than others.” I’m sure the people on the line are being watched like hawks by these higher-ups to make sure they’re getting their work done.
This is disgraceful, and I hope that Ford can find the line item somewhere in the Ford/UAW agreement to fire these thieves.
Gee what a surprise !!!
Actually, I’m not surprised about the behavior of these union officials although it is amazing that they seem so unfazed about getting ‘caught’…of course under UAW rules, such trivial things such as lying on your time cards is nothing to worry about right my union brothers? And don’t anyone waste their time telling me the rules and how the union will enforce them….the rules don’t mean shit if no one is going to enforce them…and for what it’s worth I used to be in the AFL-CIO…these things I know.
What does surprise me is that the local Detroit news did this report…I guess those Ford advertising dollars must have dried up eh Channel 4 ?!?!? I mean generally the local news organizations know what side of the bread the butter goes on but Wow…not with this report.
Of course…maybe this is all part of the demonization of the UAW and they played right into the news’ hands with this one-way to go UAW…if you had any sense of the moment you would fire these two fellers swiftly…Oh wait, you can’t do that…and neither can Ford without making it a ‘Federal Case’.
What a shitstorm y’all find yourselves in Ford. this what you deserve for letting the employees dictate the rules.
What’s funny is that obviously someone in the union (or Ford) had to tip off WDIV to follow these guys and expose them – how else would they know?
We used to see a lot more of this – until Kwame became page one material. Guess we’ll see more of this now…
IMO the unions need to be busted up. the only business a union is in is getting more members. that is the unions only source of revenue. there are somewhere in the neighbor hood of 300000 UAW members. hmm, 300000 x 2 hours a month. what is that 10 or 12 million a month. that doesn’t even go for a damn thing. it’s not retirement. it’s so some scumbag leaders can make 6 figures and drink beer all afternoon and hold auto manufacturers hostage while they negotiate the best deal for themselves.
WTF happened to the free market.
Pathetic sorry asses….I hate to say it but these two typify union hacks who people rail against and prove unions have outlived their good intentions….The fat guy can hardly walk, if I was the manager of a Walmart, I wouldn’t hire him to be a greeter at $8.00/hr.
Shame on the UAW….shame on Ford.
It’s not just a “tip-off”… The reporter had actual time cards.
This means that someone with access to the actual time cards is a RAT…
A RAT on two top bosses. This tells you that people are finally scared… Imagine when these stories start to break at GM and Chryco…
Nationwide news… “Welcome to CNN, tonight we show your tax dollars at work!”
This is a symptom of any hierarchical “power” system! Police, finance, local authority etc. Corruption rises to the top eventually. It’s creeping and the corrupt players mean to take advantage.
It’s a measure of the rank’n’file that surround such corrupt people of how far they are allowed to climb. The rank’n’file must understand how damaging such behavior is to their own interests, well, at least they might do now!
As Douglas Adams so expertly wrote about such corrupt people; “Anyone capable of getting themselves elected President of the Universe, should on no account, be allowed to do so”. (Substitute UAW, or Shop Floor Rep, or Job Security Secretary for “Universe”).
Those guys look like Sopranos extras. Nice PowerStroke Crew Cab, though.
Any insular power structure breeds a ruling, insulated, untouchable class.
Don’t forget to check out the union “habits” at Boeing, and the non-union labor bosses in other industries.
Now, will the media do the Right Thing and follow-up this story?
I think not. It’s about ratings, and generating “anger and outrage.”
BTW, I can’t think of a single Ford $ being spent at WDIV. Dealers do most, if not all, car advertising.
On the key high demo / high revenue Today Show lead (first half hour), Honda dealers have the best ad slots… (Rockin’ Rick Hodges!!!”
Unions are not perfect, I’m not going to defend these two drunken shitbirds, but please do not lump all hard working, dues paying union members into the same bunch as these two.
There are bad apples in the military, police and so on, but the majority are decent hard working people.
TV news? Really? Why not start running screaming headlines like the Drudge Report.
“If you think this is an isolated incident, chances are you’re too good for this world.”
I don’t know if this is isolated. Frankly, I suspect that you really don’t either. But it’s easy to wave the bloody shirt, particularly when there’s no countervailing point of view. I don’t say this as a union champion, but as a journalist.
This is getting old. Maybe I need to get my car fix somewhere else.
Well, at least they weren’t caught playing golf, or sitting in a SPA AIG style.
BTW – is obesity a problem in the US? Much? Not hard to figure out why the cars are as big as they are … what does Mr “Get off my property!” actually do for the Union? Waddle?
A curious person with a calculator could spend some time figuring out what those extra helpings are doing as far as US energy independence is concerned.
Ford should ask this jerkoff for their overtime money back. If not, they should hire a private investigator to follow his ass and call the cops everytime he drives to the liquor store after he runs out the first time.
drives to the liquor store after he runs out the first time
I was desperately holding myself back in case of starting another pickup war, but I can’t help it.
So he drives a dual cab truck back’n’forth to “work” and he’s also not smart enough to grab a six-pack the first time or even a crate so he drives again!
So much for “every” pickup being used by a tradesman.
Anyone who thinks that these incidents of UAW corruption (for that is what it is) are isolated need to spend a little time on Google. Try “UAW corruption.”
Some of it’s old, but all of it’s relevant (the surest indication of future behavior is past behavior).
UAW Members Expose Widespread Corruption
Corruption and Collaboration
“The UAW also operates joint funds with each of the Big Three automakers for the retraining of laid-off workers. The funds were set up in the early 1980s, when recession and foreign competition led to large-scale layoffs, then expanded tremendously when the automakers recovered and prospered.
“The joint funds have made questionable expenditures, such as sponsoring NASCAR racers Bill Elliott and Casey Atwood (sponsorship of a NASCAR racer costs between $8 million and $16 million annually) and two NASCAR races, the UAW-GM Quality 500 and the UAW Daimler/Chrysler 400. The autoworkers’ union also teamed up with Daimler/Chrysler to put on a “Hollywood Showcase” at the 2000 Democratic National Convention. A UAW-Ford conference in Las Vegas reportedly drew 3,000 delegates and guests.”
Members Need to Know What Bargainers Did
The lawsuit charges perhaps the most grievous breach of trust that union leaders can commit against members and an employer – deliberately prolonging a strike for personal gain. The lawsuit claims that a union bargaining team split about $200,000 in phony overtime money from GM as part of the deal to settle a 1997 walkout in Pontiac, and that two UAW officials held out for factory jobs for their sons. Meantime, GM was out 87 days’ production of hot-selling pickup trucks and about 6,000 UAW members lost $10,000-$20,000 each in wages.”
And on and on and on.
I haven’t seen such great investigative work by a local news station for quite a while. Nice work!
These fellows are getting shortchanged. I mean, heck, VW’s union execs got hookers.
Lots of corruption in Southeastern Michigan. I’ve heard lots of unpublished stories over the years about the UAW and their good buddies over at the teamsters.
My current headache in that part of the world comes from one of the outside law firms that the cities in that area hire as their counsel. The firm is so desperate to run up billable hours that they’ll violate the cities own ordinances to cause problems. Any excuse for litigation and more hours. Consequently, unless you have top notch inside counsel that can tell them to go “f” themselves (literally) when they call, it’s almost impossible to do business in those cities.
Robert Farago :
These UAW guys need to hire Buddy Cianci as a consultant. Cianci elevated corruption to an art form. These guys could learn a lot from him.
Now aren’t these the guys you want in charge of the 34 Billion VEBA fund?
Reminds me of a scary episode my father had about 10 years ago. He worked at an American Airlines maintenance base as head of instrumentation repair. He had one problem guy that would often take long lunches (3 hours), leave early, show up smelling of alcohol, same stuff as these wastes of space. Since everyone is union, it’s nearly impossible to do anything about, so he just documents each incident with copies of his time cards and each week updates a supervisor. Supervisor pretty much says they can’t do anything about it. One holiday, the guy punches in (double time for holidays!), but leaves and doesn’t come back. My dad finds out he went to the lake, the guy even drove his boat up to work and parked it while he went to clock in as the security guy showed him on the tape when my dad asked about it. So my dad fires him the next day. The guy takes up a grievance with the Union and my dad has to go to court to resolve it. The guy got screwed by the surveillance tape showing him leaving, with boat in tow right after clocking in, but had it not been for that, there is no doubt my dad would have been in trouble for persecuting such a fine union specimen.
Are all union workers this way? No, absolutely not. 95% of the guys there were great guys. They worked hard and did a great job. The problem is that the Union will fight just as hard for a known bad apple so it isn’t worth trying to eliminate people that aren’t earning their take. My dad’s supervisor said it was the first time in his 38 years he had ever seen a union worker successfully fired without some kind of compensation. My dad believed in unions, I can’t say I fully agree with his arguments, but he believed it was the worker’s right to be able to fight for every penny they could get. Not sure what he might have thought about everything going on here with Detroit.
Having spent a good amount of time in a auto manufacturing plant I can say that this does not suprise me. I’ve seen drug deals go down on the line, plenty of beer cans in the parking lot, one woman was running a brothel from her post, others would let vehicles go by without installing their parts. When you have as much power as the UAW has, corruption is inevitable. Not everyone is bad, most were hardworking honest people, but the level of shenanigans far outweighed what I’ve seen in any other work environment.
Here we go again….
How many hours of overtime abuse by these guys equals the $20 million Alan Fishman ‘earned’ by babysitting Washington Mutual for 3 week?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Fishman
How many hours of overtime abuse by these guys equals the $280+ million than Enron paid its top crooks executives as they drove that company off of a cliff?
http://www.forbes.com/2002/03/22/0322enronpay.html
How many hours of overtime abuse by these guys equals the $9+ billion dollars of cash(or 363 tons of $100 bills, to put it another way) that just…disappeared in Iraq?
http://www.amconmag.com/article/2005/oct/24/00007/
How many hours of overtime abuse by these guys equals the $50+ billion of investor money that Ponzi King Bernie Made-Off (the actual pronunciation of his last name) with?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/03/AR2009010300040.html
And on and on and on
Next on Rescue 4! Local child steals Milky Way bar from Walgreen’s! Film at 11!
On the grand scale of corruption, these pikers are much closer to the Milky Way thief then they are to the Masters of The Universe.
http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/11/11/The-End-of-Wall-Streets-Boom
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When I managed union shops it was my experience the biggest drunks, malingerers and troublemakers got themselves into protected union positions.
Any idea what happened to these guys (if anything?)