The degeneration of the United Automobile Workers (UAW) is a labor-movement tragedy. Once renowned for being militant, progressive, and squeaky-clean, the union today has been exposed as a corrupt and incompetent bureaucracy.

Three Fiat Chrysler executives and eight union officials have been charged with crimes as a result of a multiyear federal investigation into corruption in the auto industry. For over a decade, millions of dollars were funneled by the company into the hands of union officials to grease the wheels for company demands at the bargaining table. According to one Fiat Chrysler official, the goal was to keep UAW leaders “fat, dumb, and happy.”

Not content with the payoff from employers, former UAW presidents Dennis Williams and Gary Jones have both also been accused of embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars in union dues to finance their bottomless appetite for spending weeks on end, and sometimes months, living in gated luxury California villas where they played hundreds of rounds of golf, smoked cigars, ate steak dinners, and drank high-end liquor.