The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) internal document excerpted below supports the allegation that Obama appointee John Lund has told union officials to ignore federal investigators and deal with him personally.  His actions irreversibly taint criminal investigations and subvert employee protections in favor of union bosses, while raising the prestige of his labor consultant team in Wisconsin.

Above is the internal OLMS Regional Director meeting minutes that confirm what my source has been telling me. (PGHDO = Pittsburgh District Office)  What Lund is doing, is much more than fixing parking tickets; he is interfering with potentially serious criminal charges.

As Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) Director, Lund heads the office primarily responsible for criminal investigations regarding union embezzlement. A union’s failure to file its union financial disclosure report in a timely manner automatically prompts a series of actions taken by the DOL personnel. A financial report delinquent more than 90 days is usually followed-up personally by DOL investigators.  But, ‘former’ labor union consultant Lund has short-circuited normal procedures; he is literally telling union officials “not to deal with OLMS investigators” and “send the reports directly to” him.

The office Lund heads is responsible for investigating and reviewing union financial reports and union official conflict-of-interest disclosures. The office functions somewhat similar to the   Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) but for unions rather than businesses.

If you will, imagine Lund as an SEC Director, giving corporations the same instructions do “not to deal with SEC investigators, just deal with me directly.”   Congress and the Inspector General would rush to investigate, and the media would provide full coverage of every detail.  Speculation would be rife within the media, and generate frequent headlines.  The union officials who went see Lund would be under the microscope as well as their unions. Their financial records for the past decade would be reviewed and each questionable trip to Las Vegas or Australia would be questioned.

More importantly, union members and those forced to pay dues to these unions would likely be painted as victims that they are.  Perhaps the press would even look back at the last three years of union disclosure elimination that John Lund has orchestrated that has no benefit for the rank-and-file.  No, Lund has been systematically dismantling union financial disclosure and union boss conflict-of-interest reporting to the benefit of his union boss clients. (more…)

In April we exposed Obama’s overseer of union financial disclosure and his personal conflicts-of-interest.  Now we have well-sourced evidence that Director John Lund is telling union officials to bypass Department of Labor investigators and work with him personally.  Imagine if U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Mary Schapiro invited delinquent reporting corporate presidents and treasurers to deal with her directly and ignore SEC personnel. Lund is the Office of Labor-Management Standards Director who oversees investigations and audits of union financial records and union officials’ conflicts-of-interest reporting, and he is using his new position to benefit his old clients form Big Labor. From the previous BigGovernment post:

John Lund’s Conflicts-of-Interest

The Obama Ethics Executive Order requires appointees to pledge that they will refrain from involvement in matters involving their former employer or clients.  The AFL-CIO and other unions are former clients of John Lund , and these unions remain clients of his former and current employer, the University of Wisconsin School for Workers (Lund is currently on unpaid leave while at DOL).  The Wisconsin School for Workers’ primary mission is to train union officials; the very officials that Lund now purportedly investigates for corruption.

Lund currently attends conferences and union training meetings like he did while he was the School for Workers director — a U.S. Government employee on the taxpayers’ dime.  While at the conferences and meetings, he hands out business cards like candy to those he has federally-granted power over.  He tells these Big Labor bosses “If you have a problem come to me, and ignore the field investigators.” Why?  Because by going to Lund, union bosses can work out deals to avoid jail time or criminal charges.  He can personally advise them how to “clean up” their reports to avoid consequences.  On the other hand, if pesky Department of Labor investigators get involved, then government investigative records will be made, facts will be verified, and falsehoods will be documented.

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At the Florida Democratic Party State Convention over the weekend, U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis insulted members of the Tea Party, referring to the activists as “teabaggers.” Teabagger is a pejorative term used to refer to a certain sexual act. Liberal talk show hosts such as Rachel Maddow brought the phrase into the mainstream in 2009, using it as a tongue-in-cheek insult.

As reported by Tallahassee Democrat and Sunshine State News, after voicing her support for large federal programs, Solis warned, “I’ll be darned if I’m going to set that aside now because a few teabaggers want to somehow muzzle my voice,” Solis said. “We don’t have to sit back and allow a minority in the Congress, known as the tea party, to dominate the discussion in our households.”

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz echoed Solis’ sentiment, telling the crowd of Democratic partisans, “the unfortunate thing is that the problem, in fact, stems from a brutally fanatic right wing group of extremists, who put politics and ideology above principles and people.”

“These fanatics are destroying our state and our country and the contrast between their agenda and ours has never been more stark,” continued Wasserman Schultz.

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In yet another example the Obama Administration’s pandering to its union cronies while thumbing its nose at the other 88% of America that is union free, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis will be headlining (at taxpayer expense) to an AFL-CIO “summit” later this week in Minneapolis. The subject of the conference? How to unionize young people (and others).

Targeting younger workers has been part of the AFL-CIO’s strategy since Richard Trumka took over the reins of the AFL-CIO in 2009. Elizabeth Shuler, the AFL-CIO’s Secretary Treasurer, has been spearheading the effort and is hosting the “Next Up: Young Workers Summit” in Minneapolis later this week.

The summit was announced back in March on the Communist-run People’s World website:

The AFL-CIO’s new young workers advisory council is taking charge of the movement to invigorate the labor movement – and make its leadership more youthful – says Liz Shuler, the federation’s secretary-treasurer.

One key step, she said, will be a second “Next Up” summit for young workers and activists, to be held in Minneapolis-St. Paul from Sept. 28-Oct. 2.

Shuler has led the effort to make labor’s leadership younger and look more like its members.  The first summit, in D.C. last year, drew approximately 300 delegates from around the country.  Shuler hopes for 800 this time. (more…)

Last week, the public comment period closed on the Obama Labor Department’s proposed regulatory change to alter a 1959 law that would make employers and their service providers (attorneys and various consultants) file financial disclosure statements and make personal information public, all in order to give union bosses hit lists of individuals and companies to target. Prior to the closing of the public comment period, there were nearly 6,000 comments—4,000 of which came within the last ten days or so as more people became aware of  the union-backed proposed rule.

So far, it has been remarkable that almost no attention has been given to this issue on Capitol Hill. However, it may be that very few have actually understood the DOL proposal’s unprecedented overreach and broad ramifications until these last few weeks. Yet, since so many of the law firms who donate to high-ranking Democrats (as well as to Republicans) will likely be deemed ‘persuaders’ and be required to report their incomes under the DOL’s proposal, there may yet be some interest raised in Congress over the issue.

Nevertheless, in addition to many of the comments from individuals urging the union appointees within the Department of Labor to drop this unbelievably broad proposal, several larger groups expressed their harsh criticism through their comments.

Among those comments, Over 1500 came from persons affiliated with the Society of Human Resource Management. Outside of attorneys, with 250,000 human resource professionals, SHRM members are probably the single largest grouping of individual service providers who will be affected by the DOL’s proposed change.

What follows below are some excerpts [with emphasis added] of a few of the comments received by the Department of Labor: (more…)

As a preface, sometimes it helps to have been “on the other side” when trying to determine what the unions’ game plan is within the Obama Administration. What you are about to read comes from having been on the other side and, quite frankly, putting two and two together. And, if you are not alarmed when you finish reading this, you should be, because there may be something much more sinister afoot at the Department of Labor than most people realize.

Yesterday, information was shared with you about the importance of submitting a comment by Wednesday on the Department of Labor’s proposed regulatory change on who would be newly classified as ‘persuaders.’

There has been one sentence, more than others, in the Department of Labor’s 160-page proposed rule change that indicates the DOL’s expansion of the definition of ‘persuader’ to mean just about any vendor who has anything to do directly or indirectly with an employer’s relationship with employees since activities may implicitly influence the decisions of employees with regard in the exercise of their rights in the workplace.

Until now, however, one part of the sentence has been overlooked which, unless addressed, may cause individuals great harm—literally, physical harm. (more…)

You need to act before Wednesday. At a time when the Obama Administration is clamoring to save or create jobs, his Department of Labor is about to sucker punch America’s job creators with an unprecedented regulatory overreach—all to curry more favor with union bosses.

On Wednesday, the public comment period will be closing on a Department of Labor proposal that the majority of America knows nothing about and even fewer understand.

If enacted as drafted, the union cronies within the Department of Labor will require every private-sector employer and service provider (whether or not they ever talk directly to employees) to file financial statements with the Obama Labor Department if the service provider’s services indirectly affect employees’ choice to unionize or not.

Unless you act by commenting here, this rule change will likely take affect. [See link to a downloadable sample comment below.]

Once the financial information—which includes the service provider’s entire company (or firm’s) receipts (even from other clients)—are submitted, it will become public information. It will then be published on the Department of Labor’s website and available to union bosses. What’s more, willful failure to file the financial information is a criminal violation, punishable by either imprisonment, a fine, or both. (more…)

Assuming she has outside advisers advising her, Barack Obama’s Money Maven, Penny Pritzker,  is exactly the type of individual Labor Secretary Hilda Solis will likely be targeting when the Department of Labor pushes through its new rules targeting “anti-union” employers.

In fact, it is rather odd that Ms. Pritzker’s anti-unionism hasn’t had a light shined on it by the union appointees at the National Labor Relations Board. Perhaps Craig Becker and his union cronies on the Obama board are just too busy haranguing Boeing and a myriad of other job creators for them to notice. Then again, perhaps Ms. Pritzker’s friendships within the Obama administration give her “special” consideration.

Pritzker, with a net worth of $1.1 billion and #204 on the 2009 list of Forbes 400 Richest Americans, according to her website, is the Chairman of the board of TransUnion, Chairman/CEO of Pritzker Realty Group, and Chairman and co-founder of Vi (formerly Classic Residence by Hyatt), The Parking Spot and Artemis Real Estate Partners. She also serves on the board of Hyatt Hotels Corporation and is a past board member of the Wrigley Company, Marmon Group and LaSalle Bank Corporation. She was also, at one time, considered to be a contender for Obama’s Commerce Secretary.

Now, Pritzsker serves on the President’s Council for Jobs and Competitiveness which advises the Obama Administration on economic growth and job creation, as well as Rahm Emmanuel’s Chicago Board of Education. (more…)

In a labor law system created by the National Labor Relations Act and overseen by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), hardworking employees are typically the pawns in battles between Big Labor and management. It is rare when the livelihoods of individual employees are even considered by the NLRB, and its recent action of attempting to close Boeing’s South Carolina expansion is no exception to the harm that the NLRB has been known to cause employees.

But, three people have stood up to the NLRB and demanded to be heard by the NLRB with regard to its wrongheaded actions against Boeing’s South Carolina workers. Dennis Murray, Cynthia Ramaker and Meredith Going, Sr. with the legal assistance of the National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation (Foundation) have filed as interveners in the NLRB’s Boeing case. (click here to download their motion).

Finally, as with the Chris Mosquera v. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, individual Americans tired of waiting for others have begun to grasp for liberty in attempt pull it back from the clutches of President Obama’s Big Labor controlled Administration.

Will there be more legal challenges to this Administration’s assaults on individual liberty and worker rights? You betcha.

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Has President Barack Obama been deceiving America, with his Ethics Executive Order 13490?  It certainly appears that the actions of the Obama Administration are far from his recent statement that he has “put into place the toughest ethics laws of any Administration in history [pause] in history.” A host of Obama’s appointments call into question the President’s commitment to his own Ethics Order.  Appointments such as U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Sec. Hilda Solis, DOL Deputy Solicitor Deborah Greenfield, and NLRB Board member Craig Becker undermine Obama’s claim of “toughest ethics.”

Now, the National Right To Work Committee introduces John Lund,  Obama’s “overseer” of union financial reporting and disclosure at DOL’s Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS).  This Obama appointee is a former director of the now-defunct Pacific Northwest Labor College,  a former SEIU union employee , a fomer IUOE union employee, and former director of the University of Wisconsin School for Workers.   Lund’s appointment means that he is now in charge of investigating financial mismanagement and irregularities by the very labor union officials he has trained for decades. (click to view the NRTW shocking handout on Lund)

Big Labor Payback Job One for Obama

Even though Obama campaigned on transparency and a focus on ethics, cronies at DOL focused on eliminating basic financial union disclosure and union officials’ conflict-of-interest disclosures requirements.

At DOL, John Lund cut the number of labor union investigators, rescinded disclosure of union officer benefits, eliminated financial reporting for unions like the Wisconsin Education Association Council, and eliminated conflict-of-interest reporting for thousands of union officials.  Each of these actions benefits Big Labor Bosses, but undercuts those forced to pay union dues and fees as a condition of employment.

John Lund Conflicts-of-Interest

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Speaking to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Winter Meeting in Washington, D.C., over the weekend, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis admitted she was biased toward unions.

Unions only account  for 11.9 percent of the workforce, but Solis’ favoritism puts them ahead of the other 88 percent of the American workers.

From the Washington Examiner:

President Obama is staying mostly quiet about the union battle going on in Wisconsin. His labor secretary, Hilda Solis, is not.

“The fight is on!” Solis told a cheering crowd at the Democratic National Committee’s winter meeting over the weekend in Washington. Giving her support to “our brothers and sisters in public employee unions,” Solis pledged aid to unionized workers who are “under assault” in Wisconsin and elsewhere.

It’s no surprise Solis sympathizes with the unions against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s budget reform proposal. After all, Solis often tells audiences how proud she is that her father was a Teamsters shop steward and her mother belonged to the United Steelworkers union. “Admittedly, I am a little biased,” she told the DNC, “because … I come from a union household.”

But is it the role of the secretary of labor to take sides in a fight that pits public employee union members against workers and taxpayers who support Walker’s reforms? After all, the Labor Department mission statement says its purpose is “to foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners, job seekers, and retirees of the United States.” It doesn’t say anything about unionized wage earners, job seekers, and retirees.

While Obama downplays his links to the Wisconsin protesters, Solis’ language is quite similar to the president’s original knee-jerk reaction.

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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,

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The Obama administration and the Democrat Party has yet again instituted new rules, rolling back requirements that forced unions to report their financial doings to their members and the public.

Obviously as far as Obama is concerned “transparency” is one of those things that only enemies should be forced to observe. If you are an Obama friend, no transparency is required.

It is interesting to note the language that Democrats used to excuse their newest roll back of transparency requirements, too (my bold).

“The [Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act’s] various reporting provisions are designed to empower labor organizations, their members, and the public by providing certain information about the finances of labor organizations and union officers and employees. A fair and transparent government regulatory regime must consider and balance the interests of labor organizations, their members, and the public, including the benefits served by disclosure, the burden placed on reporting entities, and preserving the independence of unions and their officials from unnecessary government regulation.”

Federal Register, Vol. 75, No. 153; Tuesday, August 10, 2010; Proposed Rules, P. 48416

So how does allowing unions to misuse, abuse, and hide expenditures from their own membership, the public and the government by skipping transparency requirements help anyone but the union chiefs that want to hide what they are doing from the prying eyes of reformers?

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Actor Jimmy Smits, Obama’s Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, and co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America union and Democratic Socialists of America member Dolores Huerta have recorded Public Service Announcements (PSAs) for the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) directed at workers “documented or not.”

In the video, the three DOL spokespersons announce the Department’s selective enforcement of U.S. laws as they explain that DOL intends to use its resources for both “documented” and “not” documented workers.  But, the real plan is to force all workers to pay union fees as a condition of employment.

U.S. Labor Sec. Hilda Solis’ 30-second script:

I’m U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, and it is a serious problem when workers in this country are not being paid every cent they earned.

Remember every worker in America has the right to be paid fairly whether documented or not.

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On January 8^th, BigGovernment.com posted a blog that began, “Outrageously, U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Secretary Hilda Solis and other DOL Obama appointees appear to have blatantly disregarded the President’s Executive Order #13490 – the Ethics Pledge.”

Somebody at the U.S. Department of Labor must be reading BigGovernment.com because just 11 days after the posting, the DOL ethics officer wrote a letter to The National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation President Mark Mix and provided copies of signed “EO 13490 ethics pledges.”  (See related Foundation ongoing lawsuit against DOL for DOL’s failure to comply with the Freedom of Information Act.) Each of these newly provided pledges matched the ethics order language (more on this in another post) unlike the self-administered waivers included in the publicly distributed pledges provided to ProPublica.org and referenced in the earlier blog.

In addition, the DOL ethics officer asserted that 51 people at the DOL have signed the ethics pledge and there has been only one (1) ethics waiver issued by DOL and that was for Naomi Walker.  Her Job:  Big Labor Liaison (an Associate Deputy Secretary position). Her past experience includes a stint as an AFL-CIO lobbyist among others.  Walker’s ethics waiver is the subject of this blog.

Walker’s ethics waiver and its accompanying explanatory memo was approved “after consultation with the Counsel to the President” expose The President’s Ethics Executive Order for the joke that it is.

The ethics officer provides a four-page memo (probably written in a large part by the Counsel to the President) to justify the reasons that Walker must be provided an ethics waiver of Obama’s ethics executive order.   My summary of the memo follows:

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Economist John Tamny has a piece in Forbes, “The Paradox Of A ‘Giving’ Government”, detailing the new, stepped-up emphasis by business on getting cozy with Washington, and how and why it pays off. In it is a very disturbing example of why we should expect at best weak and highly dispiriting pushback from Republicans when Obama finally gets around to following through on his telegraphed Plan B for the “global warming” agenda, “green jobs”.

“Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., presently a darling among Republicans for his pro-growth policies, has long made known his dislike of the 2009 Obama stimulus plan as a ‘wasteful spending spree.’ Nice rhetoric for sure–and as it turns out not very pure. In October 2009 the congressman wrote a letter to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis in favor of a grant application in his district, which, according to Ryan, would ‘place 1,000 workers in green jobs.’”

That’s pretty stomach-turning, when you consider the source. The government can give us nothing that it has not taken from us. The government cannot give your favored constituencies anything it has not taken away from others. The politics of envy have never been as strong in the United States as in Europe – which fact has given us a chance over the decades, but it appears to be a dwindling chance.

And no one who attended any appreciable part of CPAC this past weekend has any time for the philosophy that these are just the accommodations that one must make to stay here and do good work.

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In their first year in office, the Obama Administration has re-made the U.S. Department of Labor into the Department of Organized Labor, working hard to make certain that those who spent hundreds of millions of dollars to put them in office get a return on their investment.  While many dismiss the importance of the Department of Labor, virtually every person in America is directly touched by the rules and regulations that this federal bureaucracy creates and enforces, so changes at the top have real consequences for every working American.

As we evaluate the impact of the past year on the nation’s workforce, it is worthwhile to remember the accomplishments of President Bush’s Secretary of Labor, Elaine L. Chao.

When Secretary Chao left office, workers were safer in their workplaces than at any time in history, the Labor Department was focused upon encouraging private sector job creation, and created an enforcement environment that successfully protected workers from employers who egregiously violated the law while providing the necessary education to limit inadvertent violations.

Secretary Chao put an emphasis on clarifying workplace regulations to make it easier for employers to know the rules of the game.  Her efforts led to overtime requirements being more clear-cut for employers while explicitly guaranteeing overtime protections for blue collar workers, police and fire fighters, EMTs, construction workers and others.

The Labor Department under Secretary Chao brought transparency to the spending of Big Labor through regulations which for the first time shined a light upon labor union expenditures.  These reports revealed the massive labor expenditures supporting ACORN’s efforts,and were used by LA Times reporter Paul Pringle in his Polk Award winning series that brought down the SEIU powerbrokers in the California SEIU.

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Outrageously, U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Secretary Hilda Solis and other DOL Obama appointees appear to have blatantly disregarded the President’s Executive Order #13490 – the Ethics Pledge.

According to a report by the National Right To Work Committee, Solis and several other appointees gave themselves unilateral waivers on the two-year moratorium in direct conflict with President Obama’s two-year mandate:

Revolving Door Ban [for] All Appointees Entering Government.  I will not for a period of 2 years from the date of my appointment participate in any particular matter involving specific parties that is directly and substantially related to my former employer or former clients, including regulations and contracts.

The White House Press Office

Solis’ only publicly available signed ethics pledge is provided by Olga Pierce and Christopher Weaver at Propublica.  National Right To Work reviewed it and other ProPublica provided ethics pledges. It is clear that other DOL appointees followed Solis’ lead and granted themselves ethics waivers in conflict with the presidential order.  The report identified Deputy Secretary Seth Harris, Assistant Secretary Phyllis Borzi, Assistant Secretary T. Michael Kerr (SEIU & AFSCME), and Assistant Secretary Jane Oates.

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With the unearthing of a memo detailing an ACORN scheme to use “dirty money hungry lawyers” to force “employers to open up negotiations” and its plan to create “a model for [union] organizing” that “building trades [unions] do not have,” ACORN almost assuredly fits the federal definition of a labor organization under federal law 29 CFR 401.9.

But, the detailed scheme gets even better and closer to the line that makes ACORN a labor union.

ACORN’s bombshell talks about an arrangement to “share dues” with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and opens up a whole new array of issues between these newly discovered Siamese twins.

Add in ACORN’s plans to create union organizing partnerships with other labor unions and Big Labor funded auxiliary organizations, and it becomes a tautology that ACORN is a big part of Big Labor.

These are the details of a scintillating e-mail between ACORN operatives.  While ACORN and SEIU big-wigs who are dreaming all this up may pass it off as just wishful thinking; the facts show something different.

Right now, ACORN files labor organization financial reports for SEIU 880 and SEIU 100 with the U.S. Department of Labor.  Other exposed relationships like the New York Teachers’ Union bosses – ACORN coordinated organizing effort illustrate an ACORN and Big Labor coordination, and a relationship that may have already crossed the line.

But wait, there is more!

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Thursday, the Obama Administration announced that it will rescind rules requiring the disclosure of financial information for Big Labor slush funds and front groups.  And, the Obama Administration is giving you only 11 (eleven) days to comment!

At least they are consistent!  Just as they did for union conflict-of-interest disclosure reporting that SEIU’s Andy Stern may be ignoring and just as it rescinded union-boss perk disclosures, the Obama Administration continues to rollback union financial disclosures.

It is not surprising that Obama’s Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis would rescind these financial disclosure rules since she is the former treasurer of the Big Labor funded American Rights at Work (ARAW) lobbying and political group.   These disclosures would reveal much about the group’s expenditures on behalf Big Labor’s agenda; the very types of expenditures Solis would have signed-off on as ARAW Treasurer.

Union officials have fought these financial disclosures since 2003.  One of the AFL-CIO lawyers involved in opposing these disclosure requirements was Deborah Greenfield.   Now, Greenfield is the Obama Administration’s Acting Deputy Solicitor of Labor and Director of the Office of the Secretariat.  As Deputy Solicitor, Greenfield oversees these regulations.

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