Obama administration officials will conduct a thorough review of union financial disclosure requirements, John Lund, deputy assistant secretary in the Office of Labor Management Standards (OLMS), said Tuesday at the Department of Labor.
At issue are the annual financial disclosure reports unions with receipts of $250,000 or more are required to file under the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA).
Elaine Chao, President George W. Bush’s Secretary of Labor, strengthened the reporting requirements to give union members credible information about how their dues money was being spent by union officials and to expose “no show jobs” that benefit union coffers.
Union representatives told Lund during Tuesday’s meeting that Chao’s disclosure requirements were unfair and costly burdens, and they asked that the Labor Department allow them to file the annual reports in their pre-Bush format.
The meeting focused on disclosure reports concerning trusts in which unions have financial interests, including building and redevelopment corporations, educational institutes, and credit unions.
Lund said it was important to ensure that the information included in the disclosure forms was useful to department officials and helped to ensure accountability.
“We strongly urge the department to go back to the old forms in place before the 2003 modifications,” said James Coppess, who represented the AFL-CIO. “They were slightly less confusing and they capture the expenditures that are appropriately reported.”
Coppess also said the new forms are almost impossible to understand and require a radical restructuring of accounting practices.
Allison Beck, general counsel to the Machinists Union, said she did not understand the forms required under Chao, while Bridget O’Connor, general counsel to the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craft Workers, said the reports were invasive.
Over the past 45 years there have been no experiences that justify new reporting requirements concerning certain “public bodies” and their connections with labor unions, said David Strom of the American Federation of Teachers.
“There is a substantial cost for setting up new accounting systems and this burden far outweighs the small added benefit from this information being made available,” he said.
Nathan Mehrens, a former Bush administration official who was in attendance, told The Examiner that such comments from union officials were misleading and inaccurate.
“The union commenters tried a slight of hand by asserting that union officers and employees must keep track of every business and employer in the known universe in order to be able to file the report,” he said.
“This is not the case. A union officer or employee need only keep track of their own individual holdings, transactions in those holdings, and money and other items they receive. Then that officer or employee compares their holdings, transactions, and receipts against the list of entities found in the regulation. If there is a match a report is owed, if there is not a match no report need be filed. It is that simple.”
