Mackinac Center Sues UAW for Fake Union Scheme

my name's jim shake i'm an actuary i worked the uaw from 2008 until i retired in 2018. i've been a union member since oh about 1968 when i was still in high school always supported the rank and file workers of the little guy starting in 2014 when the new president dennis williams came in he had instituted dues increases department head came to me and said bad news everybody has to sign these doosan authorization cards to have dues withheld from your pay as we went along i said well michigan is a right to work state i don't really need to pay dues the aide came to me pulled out the uaw bylaws and said here's the section you're an at what your other professional employee you're at will and we don't need to keep you so i realized i wanted to keep my job i wasn't ready to retire at that point i better sign it it was uncomfortable it felt like it was a kickback arrangement i mentioned that to one of my actual colleagues outside the uaw i didn't get anything it didn't help me when they were negotiating pension benefits for the internal staff got to retire anyway i'm turning 66 so i put in from my retirement after that i sent a letter to the then president of the uaw gary jones and copied the chief legal counsel there asking for my dues money back and i never heard any response from them contacted someone i knew who recommended the magnus center and i approached them and here we are now i'm pursuing the case after a good deal thought because first of all i was encouraged by one of the staff uaw staff attorneys to ask for these monies back and then when i sent the letter in i received no response whatsoever and i thought they didn't care so much about legalities or things like that almost an arrogance there one of the most important things to know about this case is we're used to thinking of the uaw as the union that represents employees against the company they work for in this case the uaw is the company the uaw cannot bargain with itself against itself and there are laws against having a company union so it was so surprising when they claimed to have this local x to be a union representing mr sheikh that the money was just going to the uaw who's the employer and with all the current uh indictments and convictions we've seen just how the uaw has been spending their employees money they've been buying you know they have multi-thousand dollar bar tabs they've been buying golf clubs and shotguns and condos on the golf course and they were demanding that employees in this case mr sheikh contribute to that through local x the uaw stated that local x was a fiction that there is no such union therefore the the way they were demanding that jim sheik and others paid the headquarters was false pretenses they put that on the dues withholding form that it was a local union dues they put on their irs forms when they reported their income taxes that they were paying dues they've since essentially admitted that that is false that these were not dues that these were ways for employees to contribute to the uaw's headquarters expenses and the expenses of the leadership and so therefore we brought charges of fraud and conversion which is taking someone else's money and breach a contract because he did in fact sign a dues withholding card where they said we're going to take these dues and transfer them to a union representing you and they did no such thing you

Channel: Mackinac Center

Views: 589

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Id: CbWuDFl4G-w

Length: 3min 51sec (231 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 27 2020