The wages of corruption at the United Auto Workers continue to be paid. On February 18, Michael Grimes, a retired senior official at the Detroit-based union’s General Motors Department, was sentenced in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan to 28 months in prison and a year of supervised release for honest services fraud and money laundering conspiracy related to his extraction of roughly $2 million in payoffs from UAW vendors through multiple schemes. He also must pay about $1.5 million restitution plus a $200 assessment. Grimes had pleaded guilty in September after being charged in August. The actions follow a probe by the FBI, the IRS and Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards and Office of Inspector General.
Grimes, now in his mid-60s, a resident of Fort Myers, Fla., had served as a $150,000-a-year administrative assistant to United Auto Workers Vice President Estrada. Apparently, it wasn’t enough. … Read More ➡
The strike by nearly 50,000 United Auto Workers against General Motors ended after nearly six weeks on October 25. But Jeffrey Pietrzyk’s troubles are far from over. On October 22, Pietrzyk, a retired top aide to ex-UAW Vice President Joe Ashton,