Our state is facing a situation that could destroy Alabama jobs, Alabama businesses and Alabama communities. The UAW is peddling bogus drugs to hardworking Alabamians who work in auto manufacturing plants and taking money from good people's wallets.

To me, this is nothing new. I was raised by a single mother who worked shifts at a factory to provide for me and my sister. I know how hard the work is. I also know that when unions come along, they promise you a lot for nothing. They make up great stories to convince workers that they will get better conditions. They promise a better life with more money, less work and many other things. But when Alabamians come in with their union cards, they don't tell them this:

They don't know that they have to pay a portion of the pay they receive to support the lavish lifestyle of UAW President Sean Fain, who makes hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

They are not told that in the past five years, multiple members of the UAW leadership have been convicted of financial crimes against UAW members and have been sent to prison.

They fail to tell you that while the unemployment rate in Detroit, Michigan, a UAW stronghold, is over 8 percent, the rates in Hope Hull, Vance and Lincoln, Alabama, are all more than half that.

They were not told that less than five years later, union leadership voted to close the Gadsden-Goodyear plant, leaving hundreds of Etowah County workers unemployed.

Etowah County residents know what it's like to watch their neighbors go from prosperity to suffering as longtime Goodyear workers are laid off by the union that paid their hard-earned money for years.

In Rainbow City and Attalla, they remember watching proud, hard-working men and women forced to stand in line for unemployment insurance when unions voted to close their workplaces and left town, leaving them behind.

Union leaders drove off, leaving hundreds of Alabama families in the rearview mirrors of the luxury SUVs they had bought.

In fact, the union is the largest pyramid scheme in the country. Those at the bottom of the pyramid are told a grand story about how they can easily get rich and improve their lives by simply paying a small amount of money from their salary to the managers above them. They are then encouraged to recruit more members and build their downline. The problem is, like any other pyramid scheme, only a few at the top get rich at the expense of those at the bottom of the pyramid who are trying to achieve the American Dream.

It's time to let the Alabama autoworkers know what the people of Gadsden know: unions are a way to make money, but not for Alabama workers. Alabama workers pay for the lavish vacations, luxury cars and fancy dinners for UAW President Sean Fain and his cronies. They will take the money that the state's autoworkers are forced to pay them and laugh their way to the bank just as they laugh at the workers of Detroit and Gadsden, Alabama.

And when the laughs are over, they'll do what they did with the unionized factories in Gadsden: they'll vote to close the Alabama factories, putting the union workers out of work, and then move on to the next state to sell their empty promises to a new target.

Scott Staathagen is the majority leader of the 75-member Alabama House Republican Caucus and a state representative for Alabama's 9th Congressional District.