The bosses at the United Auto Workers really know how to polish their public image, don’t they? As their national leaders watch members slip away like sand through an hourglass, Pennsylvania officials are proving that charity doesn’t start at home.

In Allentown, the local UAW chiefs have decided that they are dropping their participation in the United Way because clerical employees there want to kick another union out as their representative. The Morning Call reports that the union’s leadership has decided to take its ball and go home:

The conflict began when a group of clerical employees at the United Way’s Bethlehem office petitioned the National Labor Relations Board to remove United Steelworkers Local 2599 as its collective bargaining representative. The Steelworkers have alleged [United Way President Susan] Gilmore was behind a plot to remove the union, though the union withdrew an official complaint to the NLRB and the United Way has vigorously denied the charge.

Carl Breininger, president of UAW Local 677, said Tuesday that [UAW representative on the charity board Ed] Shelton’s decision to resign was an organizational decision and that the union also may consider abandoning its support of the annual United Way fundraising campaign at Mack Trucks Inc. in Allentown.