Here at Freedom@Work, we’ve spent some time documenting the Obama Administration’s efforts to gut basic union transparency guidelines under the guise of saving money. We’ve also urged concerned readers to get involved to help stop the Department of Labor from rolling back transparency requirements aimed at curbing Big Labor’s corrupt practices. Unfortunately, the worst may be yet to come — the Administration has just announced its potential plans to close the Employment Standards Administration, an office tasked with rooting out union corruption:

The Obama Administration has found a way to cut $100 million from the federal budget and one of the items on the chopping block is an office inside the Department of Labor that conducts oversight of labor unions.

Pursuant to President Obama’s April order that federal agencies come up with away to eliminate $100 million in wasteful spending, White House Budget Chief Peter Orzsag and Cabinet Secretary Christopher Lu issued a 20-page list of items to cut to the president on Monday.

One of the proposed cost-saving measures is the disbanding of the Employment Standards Administration (page 11 in the link), an office in the Department of Labor that has the power to audit and investigate labor unions for corruption and embezzlement.

While transparency is no substitute for rolling back union bosses’ many government-granted privileges, the Administration’s eagerness to give its Big Labor allies a free pass on financial disclosure shows a callous disregard for the rank-and-file workers whose money union bosses are spending. So long as workers across the country are being forced to pay union dues just to keep their jobs, they should be getting more information about how their seized dues are being spent, not less.