Washington, D.C. (June 1, 2005) — A three-member panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit yesterday unanimously upheld the authority of the Department of Labor to heighten federal union financial disclosure requirements. Agreeing with arguments made in an amicus curiae brief filed by National Right to Work Foundation attorneys, the panel determined that strengthening the reporting laws was well within the authority of Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao.

Secretary Chao issued the final regulations on October 9, 2003, in response to a national epidemic of union corruption. This revision in the long-standing union disclosure requirements was the first such reform in over four decades.

In June 2004, AFL-CIO lawyers filed an appeal after District Court Judge Gladys Kessler upheld the new union financial disclosure requirements. Judge Kessler, who has ruled for Big Labor officials in other cases, called AFL-CIO lawyers’ arguments “unconvincing.”

In August 2004, Foundation attorneys filed their “friend of the court” brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals in opposition to the AFL-CIO’s appeal.

“This ruling affirms that not only did Secretary Chao have the authority to do what she did, but she should have gone much further,” said Foundation President Mark Mix. «Much more, such as an independent audit requirement or an itemization requirement for expenses beyond simply incidental expenses, needs to be done before rampant union corruption is deterred.”

The National Right to Work Foundation earlier criticized the curious last-minute raising of the threshold for itemization of expenditures in the final disclosure rules. In the last days before the rules were finalized, the itemization threshold was raised to $5,000 from an originally proposed level of $250, allowing the concealment of many union disbursements on the new forms.

The AFL-CIO hierarchy claimed the new regulations are “prohibitively expensive,” arguing that unions will be required to keep records in a new way. Contrary to these claims, to comply with several landmark U.S. Supreme Court rulings, unions already must track expenditures in a fashion that the new forms will require.

For example, under the Foundation-won rulings in Communications Workers v. Beck and Chicago Teachers Union v. Hudson, union officials already must maintain accounting systems, record keeping, and infrastructure to provide forced-dues-paying nonmembers with information about how resources are spent on various union functions. With these reporting mechanisms already in place, Foundation attorneys have asserted that most unions should be able to satisfy the new reporting requirements with little additional financial burden.

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is a nonprofit, charitable organization providing free legal aid to employees whose human or civil rights have been violated by compulsory unionism abuses. The Foundation, which can be contacted toll-free at 1-800-336-3600, assists thousands of employees in more than 250 cases nationwide per year.