For all the talk of "restoring labor standards," the Obama Administration is cutting four million dollars from the Office of Labor and Management Standards' (OLMS) already small budget for 2010 (see page 13 of the budget appendix under "Employment Standards Administration").

Not coincidentally, the OLMS is the branch responsible for policing union corruption and enforcing basic transparency standards. This follows on the heels of several Big Labor-friendly executive orders that can only be described as payback by the Obama Administration for union bosses' political support. After all, who wants oversight when your union bosses allies are involved in all kinds of corrupt schemes? 

Of course, all the disclosure in the world won't fix the much more fundamental problem of forced unionism, but it's telling that, in the process of exploding the size of the federal budget to unprecedented heights, Obama saw his way clear to cut funding for union oversight.

In all the recent "stimulus" hoopla, President Barack Obama and Las Vegas mayor Oscar Goodman have found themselves in something of a war of words:

Sin City's mayor wants President Barack Obama to apologize for saying companies shouldn't visit Las Vegas on the taxpayer's dime.

Oscar Goodman spoke after a regular scheduled meeting with tourism officials where he expressed concern that federal lawmakers might be discouraging travel to the city...

"You can't get corporate jets, you can't go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayer's dime," Obama said.

President Obama has already begun paying back Big Labor's big money boys for spending record sums to put him in the White House. As we reported yesterday on Freedom@Work, part of this payback is the Obama Administration's quiet attempt to delay and ultimately cancel a new rule requiring union bosses to report more specific information about how they are spending their forced dues revenue.

Members and nonmembers forced to pay dues as a condition of employment deserve the right to know where their money is going -- for instance, this private LearJet, shown below taking off in Las Vegas. Machinists union bosses spent $1.8 million (from forced dues) for hangars, jet fuel, jet maintenance, mechanics, pilots, and associated loan repayments in 2006 alone.

In November, Machinists union bosses flew the jet from Canada to Ireland on workers' dime. But the Obama Administration is moving right now to keep the ordinary unionized worker from knowing how much this and other flights by union bosses cost the employees on a per-union-official basis.

Obama claims he wants transparency and accountability -- but apparently he makes an exception for union bosses.

This week, National Right to Work Foundation president Mark Mix sent a formal letter to the director of the Department of Labor's Office of Labor-Management Standards, the federal agency tasked with providing union members and nonmembers with valuable information about how union bosses are spending their forced dues.

The letter is in response to the Obama Administration's apparent intention to delay (and ultimately cancel) some needed refinements to reporting requirements established by the Bush Administration which enhance union transparency and accountability of union expenditures.

Here are a few examples of union boss malfeasance the planned LM-2 revisions would elucidate:

• Why a local UAW union bought a John Deere tractor for $18,000 before selling it the same year for only $678
• Which Machinists union bosses are using forced dues during an economic downturn to fly to Ireland on a private jet
• How much union officials get paid in fringe benefits and whether those benefits comply with the union constitution

Mix's letter further notes the appearance of impropriety created by the Obama Administration's quick action to table the new disclosure requirements. Union bosses, who spent record sums electing Obama to the White House and who expect continued payback, have long opposed providing financial disclosure members and nonmembers.

Unfortunately, because of the incompetence of Bush Administration officials, these needed improvements to the LM-2 disclosure rules had not yet gone into effect -- even though they had been in the works for two years. Outfoxed by the bureaucracy once again, the outgoing Bushies missed the window of opportunity by a matter of days.

For more, read the full text (PDF) of Mix's letter.

Yesterday, the Department of Labor’s Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) posted on its website a weak final rule which revises standards governing disclosure of certain expenditures of union trusts, including union pension funds, strike funds, and credit unions.

Earlier this year, OLMS sought comments from interested parties concerning the new standards. On April 14, Glenn Taubman, staff attorney at the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and counsel for the National Right to Work Committee, submitted comments regarding the gaping "sensitive information" loophole which allows union bosses to hide the very waste, fraud, and corruption that are all too common in these notoriously mismanaged and underfunded union trusts:

This "sensitive information" exception to full disclosure is simply a loophole allowing union and trust fund officials to unilaterally determine what disclosure must be made public, and then hide a vast array of questionable expenditures. Financial reports of trust fund operations and expenditures can never be considered "confidential" information, because this money is owned by the employees, not the union or trust fund officials. Fiduciary agents have no right to maintain secret records or engage in secret transactions that are purposefully hidden from principals - the employees who are the actual owners of the funds.

But instead of closing the loophole, DOL merely pays lip service to these serious concerns. The fact is -- as long as this loophole exists, corrupt union bosses will be able to withhold disclosure of any expenditures they wish, claiming an exemption. DOL officials "reiterate" or "emphasize" that their sensitive information loophole should be used "sparingly." They say abuse of the loophole will be investigated. But why even have it?  There is no justifiable reason, as Foundation attorneys had explained.

The Department of Labor's serial refusal to promulgate disclosure rules with real teeth is deeply troubling. If President Bush's DOL appointees intend to leave so much discretion to the bureaucrats, these appointees ought to go ahead and quit now -- rather than waiting until January.