On May 12, the Department of Labor issued a notice proposing a few minor rule changes aimed at improving union transparency. To help workers get more information on union expenditures they’re frequently obligated to fund as a condition of employment, the new regulations would revise parts of the LM-2 form, a financial disclosure report filed by unions with over $250,000 in annual revenue.
Among other things, the new regulations would require unions to disclose the amount of money spent on benefits for individual union officers, to report indirect monetary disbursements, to itemize certain receipts of $5,000 or more, and to disclose the identity of the purchaser or seller in transactions involving union assets.
Sounds pretty modest, right? In the past, we’ve blogged about the false promise of reducing union corruption simply by regulating financial disclosure. That said, Freedom@Work certainly doesn’t oppose measures that promote greater transparency. In fact, Foundation staff attorneys filed comments (.pdf) with the Department of Labor in support of the proposed rule changes. We believe that workers have a right to know what activities their mandatory dues payments are funding.
But Senator Ted Kennedy and Representative George Miller beg to differ. In a public letter (.pdf) to the Department of Labor, they claim that the burden of financial accountability (for funds that are essentially handed to them on a silver platter, I might add) is simply too onerous for union bosses to bear (emphasis mine):
The NPRM also advances a misguided proposal that makes it more likely that smaller local unions will face dramatic increases in their financial record-keeping and reporting obligations. The officers of small local unions often work full-time for a represented employer while simultaneously performing their duties as union officers. Their resources are small, and their access to professional assistance – including lawyers and accountants – can be limited.
Senator Kennedy’s newfound enthusiasm for easing America’s regulatory burden is a bit surprising – one wonders why he recently introduced legislation requiring restaurants to list nutritional info for every single menu item – and wholly disingenuous. Local unions are affiliated with larger national and international unions precisely because these entities are supposed to provide "access to professional assistance."
Kennedy and Miller’s blatant hypocrisy is particularly rankling because union bosses have repeatedly used this justification to extract more mandatory dues-payments from nonunion employees. In Lehnert v. Ferris (1991), for example, Foundation attorneys argued before the Supreme Court that nonmember workers should not be forced to pay for union "services" provided from other union affiliates. However, union lawyers successfully claimed that "services" provided by the union’s parent organization justified additional compulsory dues-payments. Here’s the crux of Justice Blackmun’s majority opinion (emphasis mine):
Because the essence of the affiliation relationship is the notion that the parent union will bring to bear its often considerable economic, political, and informational resources when the local is in need of them, that part of a local’s affiliation fee which contributes to the pool of resources potentially available to it is assessed for the bargaining unit’s protection, even if it is not actually expended on that unit in any particular membership year.
In other words, support from Big Labor’s national affiliates is part and parcel of the mandatory agency fee package. If unwilling workers are funding unions’ "considerable economic, political, and informational resources," shouldn’t local affiliates have access to the resources they need to comply with these modest disclosure requirements?
This sordid episode demonstrates the intellectual dishonesty of union bosses and their political allies. Kennedy and Miller should just cut the crap. Like their Big Labor cronies, they just don’t want workers to see the extent to which they are being ripped off. Period.
