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This article concludes the story of how the national pension fund of Sheet Metal Workers' union invested some $100 million in Chronar, a bankrupt manufacturer of solar power panels, and its successor, Advanced Photovoltaic Systems. Company executives and union officials declined to be interviewed for this series, but more than two dozen others, including former company and union officials, were willing to discuss the history of the union's investment.
This February, only weeks after Omi Walden, the former lob. byist for the Sheet Metal Workers' International Association, became chief executive officer of Advanced Photovoltaic Systems, she fired 105 employees, more than half the workforce. Since Walden had headed the company less than a month, she was not in a good position to know whom to keep and whom to let go. As a result, she later had to call back some former employees to work part-time or as consultants.
The justification for the layoffs had been that APS was losing money. But workers soon began wondering about the company's priorities. Walden and her sister Kay Siegel, who had stayed on after the departure of her husband Mervyn, the former CEO, began to lavishly spruce up the company headquarters. "Omi and Kay went on a spending spree," says an APS employee. "They bought expensive flower pots, silverware, paintings and tried to make the place look fancy. They must have easily spent at least $100,000." Agrees a former senior executive: The justification for firing workers was the need to reduce costs. Instead, money that could have paid the salaries of at least three or four production people was spent on crystal and floral arrangements."
While Walden was beautifying APS, things were about to take an ugly turn at the union headquarters in Washington, D.C. Sheet Metal Workers' president Edward Carlough, who had initiated and supported the pension fund's investments in Chronar and APS, faced a revolt in his organization. In July, he was ousted from the leadership of both the union...