A former actuary for the UAW claims he was forced to pay union dues for years, but his local was fake.

A lawsuit, filed in December in Wayne County Circuit Court through the conservative Mackinac Center for Public Policy, said Jim Shake paid more than $7,540 in union dues to "Local X" over several years but did not appear to have any actual union representation and that he had been forced to allow dues to be deducted. Shake, who worked at the union's headquarters in Detroit, is a former Harrison Township resident who retired in 2018 and now lives in New York.

The UAW said the case is being reviewed and that it can't comment on ongoing litigation. But the union said the "legal claims concerning Local X lack merit."

Shake said he agreed to have dues deducted in 2014 after his job was threatened over his opposition to contributing to the union.

“After initially refusing to contribute to the union and informing a manager that Michigan is a right-to-work state, my job was then threatened,” Shake said in a news release. “I paid the dues, but then found out there was no actual union — nobody was representing me. I believe this was a fake union set up to withhold dues as part of a kickback scam.”

Shake "never witnessed any meetings, contract negotiations, employee representation or anything else signaling that he received union representation through UAW’s Local X," according to the release.

The Mackinac Center's legal foundation said it could not find any federal records of a Local X.

The UAW said the majority of the International Union's staff belongs to a local union, but that nonmembers with special expertise, including actuaries, can work for the union, too.

"While these types of employees are often not eligible for membership, the union believes it’s important that — like other members of the International staff — they contribute their fair share to the cost of the UAW’s operations. Local X is the administrative mechanism by which those contributions are made. They are deposited into the union’s general fund along with ordinary dues payments," the union said.

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Derk Wilcox, senior attorney for the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation, said it's irregular for an employee to pay his employer's costs.

"It's important to remember here that the UAW was not acting as Mr. Shake's union which represents him on the other side of the bargaining table from his employer. The UAW was his employer. Other staff members of the UAW headquarters do belong to non-UAW unions that bargain with the employer-UAW — or file grievances against the UAW, but Mr. Shake was not allowed to join any of those unions because he, as an accountant, had to assist the UAW when it bargained with these staff unions," Wilcox said in an email.

Wilcox compared the situation to a kickback, where an employer requires payment in order to keep a job, and he highlighted similarities he sees with the revelations from the ongoing federal corruption probe into the UAW. That case involved kickbacks and self-dealing among union and auto company officials and has led to 13 indictments and 11 convictions, although it appears far from over.

Marick Masters, a Wayne State University business professor who specializes in labor issues, raised some concern about the nature of the suit but also suggested the union could have handled such employees differently.

"It is difficult to determine from the complaint the extent to which the plaintiff was coerced. Also, the nature of this 'orchestrated' suit, sponsored as it is by a third party, gives pause for concern," Masters said. "I am philosophically opposed to right-to-work, but I also believe that all workers should be represented by real unions if they are paying dues, either voluntarily or compulsorily. It would be in labor's best interest to have encouraged workers who might not fit neatly into an existing bargaining unit to have found another way of legitimate representation."

Erik Gordon, a law professor at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, noted the troubling nature of the allegations.

"You have to hope that 'please, please let the allegations be inaccurate' because if a union really did what was alleged to its own employees, the union has serious legal and ethical problems," Gordon said.

Contact Eric D. Lawrence: elawrence@freepress.com or 313-223-4272. Follow him on Twitter: @_ericdlawrence.