On June 3, 2020, the National Right to Work Committee reported that the former president of United Automobile Workers (UAW) union Gary Jones plead guilty to embezzlement during a broad federal probe concerning widespread corruption among the UAW leadership.
National Right to Work Committee President Mark Mix made the following statement regarding Jones’ conviction:
Jones’ conviction today, like the convictions of so many other UAW officials in this years-long investigation, is shameful but hardly surprising. Far from being a situation where ‘a few bad apples spoiled the bunch,’ it has become painfully obvious that the UAW hierarchy’s culture prioritized the forced-dues funded opulence of their limousine lifestyles over accountability to the men and women on the assembly line that union bosses claimed to represent.
Mix commented on the root causes of this corruption:
The root of this corruption was compulsion. Federal law gives union bosses the power to force workers under their so-called ‘representation’ against their will, and in states without Right to Work protections to force them to subsidize their activities or else be fired. Those dual coercive powers are what put UAW tyrants in a position to begin with that allowed them to sell out the rank-and-file so they could live large.
The National Right to Work leader brought some electoral context into this discussion:
This news of course comes after the UAW officials have endorsed Joe Biden for president, who has made it his stated goal to wipe out Right to Work protections in the 27 states where they exist and grant union bosses a whole host of other powers over workers. Union bosses will shower his campaign with union money, including forced dues, in exchange for these promises of expanded coercive privileges. If Biden and the UAW elite get their way, American private sector workers’ freedom to withhold money from corrupt union brass will be completely extinguished.
Mix concluded with a call for federal action:
The fact is, the expanding UAW corruption scandal shows once again why it is vital that Congress pass the National Right to Work Act, to give every worker the freedom to decide for themselves whether a union boss is worthy of their financial support. Joe Biden and other forced dues proponents ought to explain why they believe tens of thousands of workers in non-Right to Work states should have been fired had they sought to cut off the forced dues being paid to Gary Jones’ corrupt UAW.
The National Right to Work Committee has been at the forefront of some of the most successful battles in the past few decades.
They are one of the few organizations that have actually had an impact on public policy in a direction that benefits conservatives.
