Three administrative officers at a UAW local on Detroit’s east side are facing an order from the international union to repay about $50,000 each after an internal audit found they were paid full-time wages in a way that violated UAW rules.
According to one of the officers on the hook for the money, the circumstances behind the order are mundane and result from an honest mistake.
The issue at hand, according to Luigi Gjokaj, one of those ordered to pay back the money and the president of UAW Local 51, is that previous leadership inadvertently violated a 2002 administrative letter, which is as binding as any rule in the UAW constitution.
The problem originated in July 2023 when Gjokaj transitioned from the shop floor at Stellantis’ Detroit Mack Assembly Complex to become the vice president of Local 51. He was ready to be a leader of a growing local union as it was emerging from financial restructuring, seeking a new meeting hall and preparing to negotiate with the company.
Instead, Gjokaj and two other local officers appointed then are each facing an order to repay almost $50,000 dollars to their union for “overpayment of lost time,” because the wages they were paid were not written properly into the local’s bylaws. “Lost time” refers to hours spent working on behalf of the union when a local officer would otherwise be working for the company.
Gjokaj, who is contesting the order to repay the $49,954.73 he received over 13 months spanning 2023 to 2024, said he understands why there is concern over the wages he earned, though he had no idea the union was violating rules. The amount he’s been ordered to repay is more than half of his total compensation he took home during that time (UAW officers are paid by the company when working in the factory, and paid by the union when staffing the local union hall).
Neil Barofsky, a federally appointed monitor tasked with overseeing UAW compliance with rules, could be not reached over the weekend. An employee of the international union familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not cleared to discuss it, said they see the situation at Local 51 as a minor technicality.
Local leadership at other UAW halls make as much — and sometimes more — than what Gjokaj was paid. Gjokaj and the other officers were following precedent at their local, he said, and not trying to “undermine the institution.”
“I have nothing to hide,” Gjokaj said during a three-hour interview recently with the Detroit Free Press. “Even though we may have had a technical error or a bylaw error, we didn’t do anything maliciously or intentionally. This was all with the best intentions of maintaining the local.”
In short, according to an internal UAW audit obtained by the Free Press, the wages dispersed to Gjokaj, Recording Secretary Vaquita Taylor and Financial Secretary-Treasurer Patricia Burkhart were not properly written into the local union’s bylaws. That’s a mistake that had been the case with previous Local 51 officials who received payment under the same structure, Gjokaj said.
When UAW members take a desk job as local officers and leave the shop floor, they are usually compensated by the union for those duties at a rate equal to the highest-paid member on the shop floor. But because Local 51 had not written the specific payment structure into its bylaws, the three officers have been ordered to pay it back.
At a local level, the auto workers union is governed by both the UAW Constitution and also the local bylaws, a set of rules and regulations tailored to suit each individual local hall. At issue in the case of Local 51, Gjokaj said, is a third body of governing documents in the union’s bureaucratic structure: The administrative letter.
So … what happened?
In August 2023 — a month after Gjokaj was sworn in as vice president — Local 51’s then-president, Casey Fiddler, alerted him, Taylor and Burkhart they would be full-time, paid employees of the union.
Fair enough, Gjokaj thought.
A year later, according to documents obtained by the Free Press, a trustee of the union raised the issue to the office of Shawn Fain, the UAW’s international president. The trustee asked Fain: Can my local president deem the vice president, recording secretary and secretary treasurer of the union full-time employees? And if so, how much should they be getting paid?
Union members have the right to seek a constitutional interpretation from the office of the president regarding issues at their local. Fain ruled that the bylaws at Local 51 do not address the specific question, but that UAW administrative letter, Volume 50, which was issued May 30, 2002, clarifies that all forms of compensation paid by the local union must be spelled out in the local bylaws.
“If the local union bylaws do not list it, the local union should not pay for it,” the 2002 letter reads.
The administrative letter in question, penned by then-UAW President Stephen Yokich, ruled that local unions must specify which positions of local leadership are full-time, and if so, at what rate the officers will be paid. Instead, then-Local President Fiddler unilaterally applied Section 5 of the local bylaws (which explains how the local president is to be paid, but not other leaders of the local union) to pay Gjokaj, Taylor and Burkhart.
Fain ruled that the local union must cease payment to the local officers until they could amend their bylaws to comply with the administrative letter.
“It came back down that, technically, we were not in alignment with the constitution, only because the officers weren’t mentioned,” Gjokaj said. “The question of the pay was not up for debate.”
Gjokaj said that he believed his payment was in step with the constitution. From August 2023 until the day of Fain’s interpretation on Sept. 20, 2024, Gjokaj and his fellow officers were earning full-time pay for their duties as local officers.
Once the ruling came out, they stopped getting paid as full-time officers immediately, Gjokaj said. The officers are still being paid at a lesser rate through Stellantis, according to the roles they previously held on the shop floor.
“And we asked for a full and transparent audit to catch any other issues that we may have had since we realized that there’s an issue now.”
The audit, which also covered more mundane issues related to the union, such as leasing details for the new local building, resulted in the hefty repayment order — a decision Gjokaj said he did not see coming.
“As a result of this action, three officers received overpayment for Lost Time,” reads the audit, issued in December.
Gjokaj got $49,954.73 for the time he spent working for the local. Taylor received $47,306.69. Burkhart was paid $48,269.19.
“All of these amounts are due to Local Union 51,” said the audit.
Fiddler did not respond to multiple Free Press requests for comment. Taylor, Burkhart and UAW Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock declined to comment on internal union affairs.
What now?
Gjokaj said he understands the order but plans to appeal.
“Our president, he was in his best discretion, and the discretion that was done by previous presidents,” Gjokaj said. “Everyone had the best intentions, but we now know what we need to update. … I feel it would be unfair to penalize us for something that we would have had no knowledge about.”
Fiddler has since left Local 51 and now works in Fain’s office as an administrative assistant. Gjokaj, who rose to Fiddler’s former seat in the local, said there are no hard feelings between him and Fiddler.
Gjokaj plans to take his case to an internal committee that handles appeals, seeking to prove to the adjudicators as well as his local membership that he was acting in good faith.
“The only way to beat lies and to beat darkness is to bring it out into the light, to be transparent about it, to speak about it,” Gjokaj said, adding that if members of his union had concerns, he “will continue to answer any questions about it. I will never hide from you.”
If Gjokaj has to pay back the money after his appeal, he’ll do it, he said. But he’s seeking some grace.
“We’re human. We make mistakes. And if mistakes are made, we’re gonna make corrections,” he said. “I do not want my membership to feel like they cannot trust their representatives, their local, or their president at any time.”
Liam Rappleye covers Stellantis and the UAW for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him: LRappleye@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: 3 UAW officers ordered to pay $50,000 back to union after audit
Reporting by Liam Rappleye, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
