Newly formed truckies’ lobby group, the United Transport Group, said it’s business as usual, despite a mass walkout of foundation board members.
Board director and CEO Roxanne Mysko confirmed that five had left just weeks after last month’s launch, including high-profile social media identities Mike Williams, Tony Fulton and Glenn ‘Yogi’ Kendall.
“The reason why we’ve lost those board members is that neither one was willing to sign a confidentiality agreement,” said Shane Eyers, one of only three board members remaining from the original line-up.
“There was inappropriate understanding of the legalities and the direction that we were going in, and the help that we wanted to give to the industry.”
In a conference call with Eyers to Big Rigs, Mysko said the former board members were asked to sign the agreement because she wanted to protect sensitive information and it was standard practice in any organisation.
Mysko, a long-time driver and compliance expert, also refuted claims by one of the former board members that the group wasn’t formerly certified to act as an incorporated not-for-profit.
“The lawyer said we’ve done nothing wrong because we haven’t spent one cent of the money.”
Mysko later sent us a media release with further explanation and a warning that social media allegations circulating about the UTG that are of a defamatory nature will be “treated as such in due course”.
“One of the retired board members advised after joining UTG, that he/she didn’t think this lobby group would be political and seeking a high standard of activity with a common vision, sadly it’s a very political platform to change legislation and we all have the common vision, so that member again elected to stand down stating that the process or the representation that the UTG stands for was not for him/her,” the statement said.
Mike Williams told Big Rigs that among other reasons, he’d left because he’d lost confidence in the UTG being able to deliver on what it was promising to do for drivers.
The UTG has multiple membership and sponsorship tiers, starting from $100. Mysko told us she had around 100 members so far, and had since “called in” another three board members as replacements, although she didn’t want to name them yet.
“We are happy to announce we have replacements for these board members that have much stronger business knowledge and who are held in very high regard in both community and the transport sector,” she said.
She stressed that it was business as usual at the UTG.
“Thursday our young group have our first zoom, which is still committed to help change industry,” said the media release.
“We have a vision that all our other Industry Specific Groups as detailed within the UTG web page will be established with representation within a month.”