With two sweetheart Big Three contracts in the bag and a third on the way, attentions turn to the real story down at Solidarity House – how to downsize the UAW. 
With assets of over $1B, America’s richest union has for years been living off savings to support a bloated bureaucracy and physical infrastructure first built with the dues of over 1.5 million members. (Membership is now down under 400K many of whom are lower wage “second tier” and non-automotive industry dues payers.) More than a tenth of the union’s wealth is held in real estate including Black Lake, the union’s legendary $34M private golf resort, the $17M Solidarity House and dozens of shuttered union halls. All require annual infusions of millions of UAW dollars for maintenance, taxes and operations. The UAW also sits on a $763M strike fund that dwarfs the assets of other unions. However, twice in the past five years union officials have reached into the fund for a total of $270M to pay for new organizing efforts that have so far proven largely unfruitful. Meanwhile, the union’s financial filings show it sold $7.3M in holdings from 2000 to 2006 and nearly $222 million from 2007 to 2009. Analysts estimate the union has three to five years to successfully organize a foreign run auto company or two or the union will find itself no longer able to fund such an effort or pull out of a financial death spiral. Meanwhile, UAW clerical workers, members of OPEIU, have taken cuts to pay and their health care coverage in retirement and agreed to other concessions as well as early retirement buyouts to avoid involuntary layoffs.
