The UAW is charging ten times more than engraved bricks normally cost to go into a walkway at a resort few members ever visit.
The United Auto Workers is selling bricks to its active and retired members for $125 ($75 for retired members), according to the union’s website.
The bricks, which can be inscribed with member names, are to be placed in a “Memorial Walkway” at the union’s Black Lake Conference Center and resort in Northern Michigan.
The union’s conference center and adjacent golf course has been an economic drain on the UAW and it has been propped up by members’ dues for years—even though most of those members have never been to the resort.
In the past, the UAW has spent tens of millions of dollars from its general treasury to maintain the complex.
“Over the past decade, the UAW has also been forced to provide about $39 million in loans to the Walter and May Reuther Family Education Center and Black Lake Golf Course, known collectively as Black Lake, to keep them open,” Reuters reported in 2011.
The loans are listed on the UAW’s books as assets. In a statement, the UAW said the funding for Black Lake is only considered to be a loan in accounting terms for the purpose of its filings.
“I don’t even know why we call them loans,” UAW Secretary-Treasurer Dennis Williams said in an interview in July. “I mean, it isn’t like they pay them back.”
Although one can find pricing for engraved bricks to normally be around $12 to $17 apiece, the UAW is selling them for around ten times that amount.
This raises the question, what is the UAW planning to do with the extra $100+ per brick that its pocketing?
Related:
