During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised
accountability and transparency. Last Tuesday, his administration
broke that promise to yet another group. Department of Labor
Secretary Hilda Solis betrayed rank and file union members by
repealing vital reporting regulations that allowed members to see
how union bosses were spending their hard-earned dues money.
Former Bush Administration DOL Secretary Elaine Chao, who for
eight years fought for transparency in labor reporting, created
the website unionreports.gov. Rank and file union members as well
as the general public can still use the site to monitor how labor
organizations spend their funds.
Solis’s repeal weakens one of the chief reporting tools used by
the website to collect union financial data, the Form LM-2. The
form requires labor organizations whose annual receipts are
greater than $250,000 to identify and report all expense above
$5,000. This tool allowed the DOL’s Office of Labor and
Management Standards to obtain $91.5 million dollars in
restitution of dues and resulted in over 900 convictions from
2001 to 2008.
Repealing this requirement limits union members’ access to needed
information about how their dues are being used. Chao’s changes
gave members more data to examine investments and transactions by
their union and ensure they were made at arm’s length and without
self dealing. The repeal also limits a member’s ability to
monitor union officer and union employee compensation.
Before the repeal, labor organizations were required to identify
all of their officers’ compensation including salary, benefits,
deferred compensation, and even travel expenses. Access to this
information is critical to guard how members’ money is being
spent and help prevent abuse.
In most states workers are forced to join a union if they want to
work in a certain job, meaning that the union imposes dues for
the simple privilege of working. The union member cannot decide
to not pay his dues and has little recourse to change his union.
If he disagrees with the way his dues are being spent he can
attempt, although this is difficult, to vote the union officers
out of office. Or if there is corruption, he can report the
officers to OLMS which will probably not be nearly as aggressive
in rooting out corruption in the current Obama regime.
The only way the member can know if his dues are being wasted is
by accessing information on forms like the LM-2. Weakening the
disclosure requirements allows union officers to abuse their
trust and hinders a member’s effort to make sure his dues are
being spent wisely.
Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi, ranking Republican on the Senate Health,
Education, and Labor Committee, warned the repeal is putting
union members at risk. “We should be giving the department more
tools and resources to root out fraud and abuse, not taking tools
away from them,” Enzi said.
The Obama administration claims that the recent changes were too
burdensome and would result in unnecessary expenses to unions.
This is the same specious argument that was used and proved
incorrect the last time the Form LM-2 was changed.
In 2003, union leaders claimed labor organizations would be
substantially harmed if they were required to report receipts and
disbursements of $5,000 or more. Before the 2003 LM-2 changes
unions could lump millions of dollars into single line items with
no detail. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney claimed in 2003 the
cost of the reporting changes would be over $1 million dollars
for the average international union.
The final total for the AFL-CIO, one of the largest international
unions, was only $68,000 the year the 2003 changes took effect.
The justification given by the administration for the repeal of
reporting requirements on the LM-2 is old and probably less then
accurate.
The reality of the repeal is that union members will not have the
ability to effectively oversee those in charge of their
organizations. They will not be able to learn the total cost of
benefits to their union officers. They will not be able to check
the investments and transactions of the union to ensure their
dues are being used efficiently and without a conflict of
interest.
Now, because of the Obama administration’s actions, the ability
of members to watch how their dues are being used is in jeopardy.
