DETROIT — While their union membership shrank by 15 percent last year, United Auto Workers officials spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on meetings at splashy resorts from Palm Springs, Calif., to Cape Cod, Mass., and paid tens of thousands more for bowling and shooting tournaments, baseball and golf.

More than $22,000 alone went for souvenir key chains.

The spending is outlined in U.S. Labor Department forms that, for the first time, require unions to provide greater details about how they spend members' money.

But the filings still require only bare-bones summaries — leaving some union critics to wonder what, exactly, was purchased and who got what.

"They're too vague," said engineer Allen Nielsen, a UAW member from Norwalk, Ohio. "They're big numbers, but it doesn't tell me what I need to know."

UAW spokesman Paul Krell said the Detroit-based union's spending was appropriate and reasonable for such a large organization, which represents workers nationally in trades beyond the auto industry.

"These dollar amounts are large dollar amounts, but this is a large organization," he said. "It does cost money to represent the members."

Last year, the UAW held meetings at resort or casino hotels in Palm Springs; Las Vegas; Reno, Nev.; Atlantic City, N.J.; Cape May on the Jersey shore; and Hyannis on Cape Cod. They spent $318,000, funded through dues, on briefcases and pens passed out at conferences. They spent tens of thousands of dollars on such mementos as embroidered polo shirts, luggage tags and trinkets.

They dropped another $5,150 on a retirement video for Detroit-area official Ken Terry.

The expenses comprise but a sliver of the union's $307 million budget in 2005. And despite its dwindling ranks, the UAW appears to remain financially robust. But critics say the UAW's insistence on holding gatherings at golf and spa resorts, while so many members face job uncertainty, sends the wrong message to the rank and file.

William Hanline, who works at a Delphi plant in Athens, Ala., said he's disgusted that some UAW leaders are living large in lean times.

"They have no concern for anyone but themselves," said Hanline, a frequent critic of UAW leadership. "They've been hanging around the auto executives too much. They sure have picked up their habits."

Krell said the union must travel to meet with locals from around the nation and often relies on resort towns because they have the facilities to handle large groups.

Las Vegas, he said, is well known as a convention center.

Krell, who declined to furnish union invoices, said the UAW shops for the best deals.

Still, Krell acknowledged that the union would hold most of its national meetings in Michigan in the future.

Industry experts say the UAW is only now beginning to grasp that rounds of golf, casino and beachfront resorts and other long-standing travel perks no longer make sense.

"The UAW has been around for decades and certain practices get institutionalized," said Nelson Lichtenstein, a biographer of former UAW leader Walter Reuther and director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

"And when there is a crisis, it's difficult to change the direction of the ocean liner overnight," he said. "UAW spending on the usual perks seems especially unseemly today and indicates they aren't being sufficiently attentive" to the economic times.

David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich., a nonprofit that studies the auto industry, said the UAW's national leadership has traditionally managed resources well while also enjoying a good time. And splashy conventions are one of the grandest perks that leaders get.

"Those days are just about over," Cole said.

Another industry observer was more forgiving.

Gerald Meyers, a professor of management at the University of Michigan and former chief executive at American Motors Corp., said unions sometimes have to spend money to spread good will.

Meyers also noted that, despite hard times, the UAW remains financially strong.

"Were they in financial difficulty this would be highly inappropriate," Meyers said. "But they're not. They're collecting dues continuously, they have a large income, they've been able to salt away almost $1 billion."

Meyers conceded, however, that the union's war chest could be decimated if strikes occur at Delphi Corp. and spread to General Motors Corp. or other automakers and suppliers.