This past September, Denver United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 union voted out its president of 11 years, Ernie Duran. The longtime union operative was ousted in favor of Kim Cordova, an unassuming Safeway bakery clerk.
Cordova pulled off her stunning upset in the union election by exposing Duran’s shameless nepotism and possible corruption. As union head, Duran earned $162,368 a year. But Duran had also put his wife, Crisanta Duran, on the union payroll for $133,410 and his son, Ernie Duran III, was paid $134,378.
There were also questionable expenditures, with Duran expensing money freely on booze and Denver Broncos tickets when many of the union members he represented earn minimum wage.
Cordova’s election as the new head of the union came after she publicized this information on a Web site, VoteErnieOut.com. Her Web site also spurred the Labor Department to open an investigation of the union.
The most remarkable thing about this story is that despite rampant corruption, this kind of information rarely gets aired in union elections. That’s because until relatively recently, union transparency requirements were toothless, especially compared to those covering corporations. Elaine Chao, President George W. Bush’s secretary of labor, changed all that.
“Secretary Chao updated the LM-2 financial reporting forms that unions must file each year. The old versions of the forms provided union members with virtually no useful information about how their union spent their dues,” observed Heritage Foundation labor expert James Sherk.
“The new forms required unions to itemize their expenditures and report in detail how much they paid all of their employees — like the president, and his children on staff,” he said.
However, despite President Obama’s repeated campaign pledges to increase government transparency, he’s rescinded or abandoned a myriad of union transparency requirements that Chao had begun systematically enforcing.
Last January, Obama’s chosen successor to Chao, former Rep. Hilda Solis, announced new disclosure requirements for LM-2 forms. These were hardly draconian measures — unions were required to disclose the value of the benefits received by union employees; disclose the names of who is buying and selling union property; and itemize union receipts.
But then shortly after they were introduced, Solis said implementation of these new standards would be delayed. Later, she abandoned them altogether.
In addition to LM-2 filings, unions are also required to fill out LM-30 conflict of interest disclosures. LM-30 forms require union officials and employees to list any payment they might be getting from groups that do business with the union or any payments from any employer of the union members they are supposed to represent.
For decades, few union leaders had bothered to even submit this form. The Bush administration stepped up enforcement of this basic protection of union workers, and stepped up requiring more detailed reporting requirements. The Washington Times reported that in 2005, 13,326 union officials or employees submitted LM-30 disclosures, compared with 96 the year before.
And again, the Obama administration announced last year it would no longer be enforcing new Bush-era disclosure requirements on LM-30.
Sensing a trend here? Well, the Obama administration also abandoned T-1 reporting requirements on union trusts. Ostensibly these are set up for strike funds and apprenticeship programs, but are frequently used by unions for specious purposes.
Unions contend these requirements aren’t necessary; but, since 2001, when Chao began enforcing them, Labor’s Office of Labor-Management Standards has indicted more than a thousand union officials, winning 929 convictions for a wide range of criminal activities, including fraud, misrepresentation and embezzlement. Labor has also won $93 million dollars in restitution of union funds.
Rescinding union transparency requirements raises an important question: Is Obama really on the side of unionized workers, or just the corrupt officials such as Ernie Duran that get rich representing them?
A credible answer to that question isn’t likely forthcoming as long as Obama is in the White House and Congress is controlled by a Democratic majority funded in large part by the union bosses he protects.
Mark Hemingway is a editorial page staff writer for the Washington Examiner. He can be reached at [email protected].
