Labor Dept. Ignores Its Own Conflicts as It Eliminates Union Officer Conflicts of Interest Disclosure!

Last year, the U.S. Department eliminated regulations that required unions to file reports disclosing union officer and union employee perks.  In eliminating the regulation, several Obama Administration appointees likely violated Obama’s Executive Order 13490 that prohibits appointee involvement in regulations that impact their former employer or clients.

Again, Obama Administration appointees ignore their own conflicts of interest; this time it is to rescind conflicts of interest disclosure regulations that only benefit Big Labor Bosses!  The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) is scheming to eliminate the 2007 union official conflict of interest reporting regulations – but wait there is more.

(To officially submit your comments regarding the DOL rescission, click here. Deadline to Comment is Tuesday (10/11/2010)!)

DOL Secretary Hilda Solis (former treasurer of Big Labor front group American Rights At Work), Deputy Solicitor of Labor Deborah Greenfield (who was a named litigator in a lawsuit filed by the AFL-CIO to strike down the rule that DOL now intends to rescind), and Deputy Asst. Secretary John Lund (Lund, a former Big Labor trainer and consultant to the AFL-CIO, signed the current proposed) are no doubt deeply involved in the Labor Department’s recent proposed regulation that would:

1)      Eliminate reporting of special employer payments to union officers and other union officials like shop stewards,

2)      Exclude union stewards from conflict of interest altogether,

3)      Eliminate reporting of certain loans to union officials, like loans from union operated credit unions,

4)      Eliminate disclosure of any money that union officials may receive surreptitiously from union trusts like strike funds, vacation funds, slush funds etc., and

5)      Redefine the word “employer” so that it excludes any labor unions that have employees.

No matter how you evaluate these current changes, the Department’s proposed rule is a huge benefit to union bosses but a big loser for the rank-and-file worker who in many instances must pay dues and fees to the union to keep their jobs.

While public concern will likely be ignored by Secretary Solis and her lieutenants, your comments will help establish the fact that, other than union bosses, most believe this proposed rule will allow union officials to simply hide unethical behavior and undermine the public disclosure deterrent that allegedly exist in the law. That law of course was promoted by then Sen. John F. Kennedy in 1959 after he had participated in and Robert F. Kennedy was chief counsel of the McClellan Hearings on union coercion and corruption.

Kennedy’s introduction in the Senate claimed that the legislation would provide “Full reporting and public disclosure of financial transactions and holdings, if any, by union officials which might give rise to conflicts of interest, including payments received from labor relations consultants.”

Kennedy described his bill this way:

“It will require union officials to completely disclose all possible conflict of interest transactions, so that Teamster members urged to buy lots in a so-called model Teamster community in Florida would know that Jimmy Hoffa had arranged the financing of this development through coercion on the union’s banks, had placed the promoter on the Teamster’s payroll and stood prepared as a hidden partner to reap a large hidden profit.  … we can eliminate the evil practices by which Jimmy Hoffa and his associates rose to power, their conflict of interest transactions, their destruction of union books, their manipulations of trusteeships, their rigged elections and conventions, their appointments of exconvicts as union officials, their use of union funds to build personal financial empires, their private arrangements with employers, their shakedowns and tributes … their falsification of union reports, their reprisals against honest members …”

The Obama Administration and Secretary Solis intend to undo union officer conflict of interest disclosures, unravel the disclosure promised by Sen. Kennedy, and universally allow union bosses to conceal outside income and benefits that they receive because of their positions.

The rule has yet to become final and there is an opportunity to let your voices be heard before Secretary Solis further undermines Sen. Kennedy’s most significant piece of legislation while in the U.S. Senate – the labor unions’ and labor union officials’ financial disclosure act known as the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure act of 1959.

Please consider taking action and submitting your comment regarding the Obama Administration’s plan to rescind the 2007 union financial conflict of interests report (U.S. DOL Form LM-30) in order to create a less useful Form LM-30.  To comment, click here.  Deadline to Comment is Tuesday (10/11/2010)!