Our role is not to build the power of a political party or a candidate,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told reporters on May 20 after delivering a speech at the National Press Club. Trumka’s speech was widely viewed as a warning to President Obama that he was not doing enough to earn Big Labor’s support for re-election in the 2012 campaign. The White House signaled they received the message loud and clear on Monday when the Department of Labor, led by Obama appointee Hilda Solis, issued proposed regulations making it even harder for small businesses to counter union organizing elections. Claiming it wanted to increase transparency, the Labor Department would change the definition of “advice” under the 1959 Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act. The law requires employers to report all payments to third parties hired to influence employees during a union organizing election. At present, employers are not burdened with reporting payments to consultants who just give advice on how to deal with unions.
So how does the law currently distinguish between reportable payments for “influence” and exempt payments for “advice”? Simple. Only payments to third parties that directly communicate with workers are required to be reported. The Obama Labor Department wants to change that. The latest proposal would force employers to disclose all payments to outside parties relating in any way to unions. As an example, the Labor Department said its new rule would force small-business owners who attended a seminar on “union avoidance” to report that expenditure to the federal government. Besides discouraging owners from exercising their lawful rights, such a requirement would make it harder for small businesses to even find out what their rights and obligations are during a union-organizing campaign.
