Who is UAW Vice President Cindy Estrada?
By
Tim Rivers
6 August 2018
Following the strike vote by workers at the Fiat Chrysler Automotive (FCA) transmission plants in Kokomo, Indiana, autoworkers should be keenly aware of who and what they confront. Of particular interest is the recent transfer of Cindy Estrada from the United Auto Workers’ General Motors division to head the FCA division.
Since joining the union as an organizer in 1995, Cindy Estrada had risen rapidly to become the first woman in line to take the top job in the UAW, before reports of her potential involvement in the elaborate scheme of payoffs and money laundering that has engulfed the union apparatus. On November 2, 2017, the Detroit Free Press reported that Estrada had been named as the “latest target” in the FBI probe of corporate-union corruption.
That investigation has exposed two of the main conduits of slush fund money as UAW-company training centers and bogus charities set up by union officials. The Cynthia Estrada Charity Fund allowed its legal registration with the state of Michigan to lapse in July 2017, and her stepdaughter was employed by a corporate-union training center.
At the UAW Constitutional Convention in Detroit this June, UAW officials claimed that the corruption scandal, in which at least $1.5 million was funneled from FCA via joint training funds into the pockets of union officials, was the work of a few “bad actors.” Now it has been revealed that former UAW President Dennis Williams has been implicated in the scheme.
Despite this, at the same convention UAW delegates voted to give top union officers huge raises, including a raise for UAW vice presidents, including Estrada, to $180,591.
As vice president in charge of negotiations with GM, she played the key role in…