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At DOL, John Lund cut the number of labor union investigators, rescinded disclosure of union officer benefits, eliminated financial reporting for unions like the Wisconsin Education Association Council, and eliminated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

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.

The following highlights are but a few that The National Right To Work Committee has unearthed to illustrate Lund’s conflicts-of-interest:

• On 29 April 2008, Lund made formal comments against DOL’s Form T-1 Disclosure Report.  As OLMS Director, Lund rescinded the Form T-1 disclosure report on 1 December 2010, and simultaneously rescinded reporting by NEA “intermediate bodies” like the Wisconsin Education Association Council.
• In 2008, Fund provided training at the IUOE FALL NORTH/CENTRAL STATES CONFERENCE advice on “Selecting and Researching Organizing Targets.”  Lund has recently chosen to ignore the 2007 LM-30 conflict-of-interest disclosure reports and proposes to rescind these reports as well to redefine the statutory term “Employer” by regulation, in an effort to eliminate disclosure of union organizing activities and employer-paid union time. In fact, when Lund wrote a 2005 piece about LM-30, a union stewards published an “Advisory regarding Labor Dept. LM-30” that included Lund’s 2005 LM-30 article.  Now, Lund has proposed changes to LM-30 that will eliminate most stewards from having to report any conflict-of-interests or use the LM-30 form.
• Without regard to appearances, OLMS Director Lund continues to take time to provide training for his Big Labor friends.  On 2010 January 25, Lund flew, at government expense, to Seattle, WA, to provide the AFL-CIO’s Washington Labor Council members with a personal overview of his recent reporting rescissions.  To the right is an image of the union headlining John Lund’s 3-hour presentation. At the Jan. 25 workshop, Lund will discuss the new regulations, the common reporting mistakes unions make and how to correct them, and answer your specific questions to ensure your LM reports are accurate.[i] OLMS maintains a District Office in Seattle, and its staff would have routinely provided this compliance assistance, rather than OLMS Director John Lund going out of his way to create this personal conflict-of-interest.
• Among many examples illustrating Lund’s close ties to the AFL-CIO, this Australian description of Lund in 2007 stands out, “For the last four years, he has worked closely with the AFL-CIO on financial accountability and transparency issues.”  In fact, AFL-CIO General Counsel Jon Hiatt quoted a John Lund burden estimate for the 2003 LM-2 changes.  His and other AFL-CIO expert projections of burden were found to be grossly exaggerated like Dr. Ruth Ruttenberg’s who estimated the LM-2 changes would cost unions $1.3 billion to file.

But, now that Lund is in charge of OLMS, the AFL-CIO’s exaggerations are taken seriously at DOL, despite their past record of demonstrably false expert calculations and comments.

To borrow a phrase from Obama supporter and ACORN founder Wade Rathke regarding NLRB appointee Craig Becker, “Here’s a big win no matter how you shake and bake it,” John Lund being appointed to oversee internal union corruption.

According to the latest LM-2 financial report filed with the federal Department of Labor, Stern’s 2009 compensation totaled $306,388.  By comparison, the “Executive Secretary to the President,” Doris Butler, received a paltry $48,666.

Another strong proponent of Marxist principles – in fact, the co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America – SEIU Executive Vice President Eliseo Medina took home a cool $242,286.  Fellow frequent White House visitor and SEIU Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger? $252,724.

Perhaps SEIU’s new motto should be: “Socialism For Thee, Not Me.”

So Andy, if you aren’t willing to run your organization based on the beliefs you publicly espouse, please don’t impose them on us via government policy.  The government, incidentally, your organization spent more than $60 million to elect.

The Associate Press reports:

The president of a national railroad employees union was arrested at his Ohio home on Tuesday and charged with bribery.

Edward Rodzwicz, who heads the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, is accused of soliciting and accepting $20,000 in bribes from a St. Louis lawyer. In exchange, prosecutors say, Rodzwicz allowed the lawyer to remain on a list of attorneys approved to handle injury cases for union members.

But wait a minute, we’ve seen this type of bribe before!  On the undercover video provided on the National Right To Work Committee’s YouTube channel embedded below, a different railroad union official accepted a bribe from a trial lawyer.  This videotape was part of an investigation that put two former union presidents in jail:

The Obama Administration has loaded the U.S. Department of Labor with Big Labor cronies whose central mission appears to be hiding union boss perks and conflicts of interests from rank-and-file workers who pay their salaries. 

About the time the Justice Department put together the sting operation using investigators from the Department of Labor and the FBI (shown in video above); several trial lawyers began to meet to decide how to avoid reporting their payments to union officials in this pay-to-play scheme.  Two lawsuits were eventually filed against Secretary Elaine Chao in an attempt to stop the Labor Department’s enforcement of this conflict-of-interest reporting requirements. 

More shocking is that the Obama Labor Department cited these lawsuits as part of the reason for its decision not to enforce conflict-of-interest disclosure for union bosses:

“Fundamental questions regarding the scope and extent of the reporting obligations are unanswered, and litigation challenging some aspects of the form remains pending.  Yet, by March 31, 2009, reports for calendar year 2008 must be filed.  In light of this uncertainty, the pending regulatory action, the pending litigation and the rapidly approaching filing deadline, OLMS has determined that it would not be a good use of resources to bring enforcement actions based upon a failure to use a specific form to comply with the statutory obligation to report certain financial information.”

The lawyers lost their appeal, but there is still hope for these train-chasing trial lawyers that Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and her big labor insiders will rewrite this disclosure to the trial lawyers’ liking as she began last Friday to do for union bosses by rescinding meaningful union financial disclosure.  

It appears that the Obama Administration has chosen to play Chicago-style insider politics rather than protect rank-and-file workers.  They continue to completely ignore the real burdens placed on workers by union officials who have the power to fire workers for failure to pay union dues as a condition of getting and keeping a job.  Then, they use this power to force workers to pay for union bosses’ perks.

Solis’ excuse for rescinding important union financial disclosure was that the rule put a “burden” on union officials who failed to file required reports.  In other words, she did not want to burden union officials who were ignoring the law.  Further, she also stopped enforcement of union officer conflict-of-interest disclosure reporting requirements. 

Under this Administration, we should expect to see many more of these pay-to-play deals with union bosses.

This new $5 million revelation was posted just days after ACORN founder and the embezzler’s brother Wade Rathke nonchalantly explained his reasons for the embezzlement cover-up to Megyn Kelly on Fox News:

“Because we made a decision that between restitution and retribution, that restitution was more in the interest of the [ACORN] organization and that decision was unanimous.”  

Chicago’s SEIU Local 880’s sent Dale Rathke its books

 After ACORN’s internal “discovery” of the embezzlement, ACORN Founder, SEIU Local 100 officer, and SEIU International Board member Wade Rathke took charge of SEIU Local 880’s books.  Dale Rathke’s name has been replaced with Wade Rathke’s name on Local 880’s original 2002 Department of Labor LM-2 union financial disclosure report, pictured below. 

After the ACORN embezzlement became public knowledge in 2007, SEIU Local 880’s 2002 union financial report, the form LM-2 pictured below, was resubmitted to the U.S. Department of Labor on May 16, 2007.  This is about five years after the original 2002 report that was filed by ACORN chieftain Wade Rathke.

That 2007 amended filing by SEIU 880 allows federal investigators to open up SEIU 880’s 2002 financial records for a federal investigation.  The two trustees who signed the 2007 submission of the SEIU 880 2002 LM-2 are criminally liable for any false statements made on the report.

When the Wade Rathke version of SEIU Local 880’s LM-2 2002 union financial report was amended in 2007, curious differences appeared.  The amended 2002 report filed in 2007 shows a drop of about $500,000 in membership dues from the original filing ($3,032,338 compared to the original filing of $3,525,995 of dues received.)  This should raise some eyebrows.

Unfortunately, the Obama Administration has gutted the small office that investigates labor union embezzlements at the Department of Labor (see related story).

Since we now know that Dale Rathke was in charge of SEIU Local 880’s financial records and we know his brother Wade decided to cover-up the embezzlement as he took control of SEIU Local 880’s books, then it seems reasonable that Department of Labor investigators would want to make certain that Wade Rathke did everything by the book. 

Would an investigation expose a more elaborate relationship between SEIU and ACORN? Can there ever be a full accounting of their books?

Don’t hold your breath and expect Obama’s Labor Department to act.  With the President’s close personal relationship to ACORN and SEIU, we may start hearing demands that an independent special prosecutor be appointed to deconstruct the ACORN-SEIU-Obama Administration web.

Below are the first pages of the two 2002 union financial reports (click on images for the full reports):

Received at the U.S. Department on 6/23/2003.

 

 

 

 

 

In 2007, the books were redone:

Received at the U.S. Department on 5/16/2007.