Despite Massive Industry Losses, United Auto Workers Union's Real Estate Includes $33 Million Black Lake Golf Club with $6M Designer Golf Course

Photo: Fox News, Aerial View of Black Lakes Golf Course, Owned by UAW

While the Big Three automakers and UAW president Ron Gettelfinger were grovelling on Capitol Hill for bailout money, a little secret was about to be unveiled. It seems that the United Autoworkers Union has something many unions do not possess. A $33 million lakeside retreat, Black Lakes Club, in Michigan, complete with its own designer golf course worth $6.4 million. So as the industry is being rocked by massive losses, the UAW bigwigs, including Gettelfinger, continue to operate this retreat, which flies in the face of conventional wisdom and decency. This is a horrific waste of union dues.

The UAW, known more for its strikes than its slices, hosts seminars and junkets at the Walter and May Reuther Family Education Center in Onaway, Mich., which is nestled on "1,000 heavily forested acres" on Michigan's Black Lake, according to its Web site.

But the Black Lake club and retreat, which are among the union's biggest fixed assets, have lost $23 million in the past five years alone, a heavy albatross around the union's neck as it tries to manage a multibillion-dollar pension plan crisis.

Auto Union's Golf Course "It's their members' money that they're spending on this thing," said Justin Wilson, managing director of the Center for Union Facts, a union watchdog group. "The union has bigger issues at hand than managing a golf course."

Managing the course may become a burden for the union. The UAW covers costs for the Reuther Center from the interest it earns on its strike fund, according to tax documents, but massive losses in the past five years have forced the union to make heavy loans to keep the center afloat. Critics call it a poor investment for a group with over $1.25 billion in assets.

The Reuther Center is open 11 months of the year to offer courses on leadership, political action, civil rights and other topics; it hosts nearly 10,000 visitors annually. The UAW says it sends workers there to "learn, experience unionism (and) commit to labor's cause," according to their Web site. Source: Fox News

Apparently, the bigwigs threw the little people a bone, but it comes with a cost. Union members can play golf at discounted rates on one of the country's top 100 courses, designed in 2000 by famed course architect Rees Jones at a cost of $6 million. Funny, this is supposed to be an educational center, couldn't they have rented office space in a building somewhere in Michigan? Why the pomposity of a retreat? This is a blatant example of the reckless expenditures of the auto industry. I guess this was one minor detail that President Bush and Hank Paulson overlooked when they decided to throw General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC the taxpayers' money. Of course, this is also coming from the same people who gave the banks a blank check when they and the Congress gave them billions with no strings attached. Absolutely ridiculous.