A United Auto Workers official has been suspended from the union for two years after he posted an image on Facebook showing Will Lehman, a candidate for UAW president, bound and gagged with a shadowy figure behind him pointing a rifle.
The federal monitor overseeing the union issued the suspension of Ray Jensen on Tuesday. Last month, Lehman had raised concerns about the AI-generated image on social media and in a press release.
Jensen, who is an organizer in the UAW’s Department of Bargaining Strategy and a former assistant regional director based in New York, also must apologize to Lehman. He is not allowed to run for any elected position in the union going forward, or campaign in the upcoming election, according to a stipulation signed by both Jensen and Neil Barofsky, the attorney from New York who serves as the court-appointed union watchdog and is running the upcoming election.
The stipulation states that the union’s election rules prohibit any threats, intimidation, retaliation or similar conduct. The monitor said Jensen violated that rule, and that a remedy “should be imposed to reflect the seriousness of his conduct and to deter similar misconduct by others.”
Jensen, who had backed current UAW President Shawn Fain in the upcoming election, declined to comment Wednesday. Lehman is one of five challengers hoping to beat Fain and take over leading the approximately 400,000-member Detroit-based organization. Ballots are set to be mailed to members starting later this month.
Lehman told The Detroit News that the monitor’s move to discipline Jensen “was forced by a large amount of workers that were deeply disgusted” by the image. Other union members had reached out to the monitor, he said, and there was an outcry about the incident on social media. Any worker who posted such a threat, he said, “would be fired.”
Lehman said he perceived the image as “a death threat” when he saw it, and he recalled being surprised that such a prominent UAW figure would post it online attached to their name.
“He thinks he can just do something like that,” Lehman said, adding he has not met Jensen before.
Lehman confronted Fain about the threatening post during a recent presidential candidate debate, saying that Jensen was “one of Shawn Fain’s people” and indicating that Fain owed him an apology and should repudiate Jensen’s actions.
“As far as AI posts and stuff like that with Mr. Lehman, I don’t condone that stuff,” Fain responded during the debate. “But let me tell you something: If you’re running for president, get ready, brother, because you’ll be getting them every day. I see AI stuff with me out there. I get death threats and all that stuff. You know, it doesn’t make it right, and and I don’t condone that.”
lramseth@detroitnews.com
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: UAW official barred for two years after threatening social media post
Reporting by Luke Ramseth, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Luke Ramseth, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
