DETROIT — John Weyer remembers the day that he threw out his United Auto Workers (UAW) shirts.

He started as a member of Local 1264 in 1995, taking a production job at the Sterling Stamping Plant in Sterling Heights, Michigan. For the following two decades, he was a proud union member. Weyer saw the labor movement as a key part of building a better world. But by 2014, he realized that some of the UAW leaders to whom he had long looked up were deeply corrupt, spending members’ dues on extended lavish California vacations and luxury goods.

“Think about how hard one of our nurses in Toledo on the midnight shift has to work for two and a half hours of her time a month to pay union dues,” said Weyer when I asked him why the corruption scandal that has roiled the union in recent years hit him so hard. “She’s cleaning somebody’s diaper, wiping somebody’s ass, and staying on her feet for twelve hours to pay those dues. Or think about the single mother who is working the second shift and can’t see her kids because they’re in school. How hard does she work for her dues? [The union’s leaders] were stealing that money from our members.”