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?

Nonetheless, that is what Obama and his Party is doing. This newest rollback of reporting requirements is yet another pay off to unions that have pumped millions into the campaign coffers of Democrats and the president.

But this is nothing new. This is the third time since Obama took office as president that he and the Democrats have weakened rules meant to hold unions accountable for their spending, their salaries, their political activities, and their investments.

Upon entering office one of the very first things that Obama did in the arena of labor relations was direct his Dept. of Labor chief to ease reporting requirements on union finances. Since then it has been discovered that unions have been violating disclosure rules for decades and Obama is making that even easier for them to do.

Then a few months later the Dept. of Labor announced plans to rescind changes made to the reporting rules (the LM-2 reporting form) that were put in place to force unions toward more transparency in their finances.

And what has Sec. of Labor Hilda Solis been more worried about since she took the position? Aside from making the lives of union scammers easier, she’s been trying to make sure that illegal immigrants get “paid fairly” for their labor!

This is all of a piece for the Obama administration. Obama was put in Washington by the millions of dollars given him by left-wing unions and he’s been paying them back since day one even if it means harming the economy and making the lie to his claims that transparency was an important goal for his administration.

Ilyse Schuman has a pretty good run down of what those rules changes are at Lexology.

Specifically, the proposed changes would accomplish the following:

• Return to the pre-2007 practice whereby union officers and employees were not required to report compensation they received under union leave and “no docking” policies established under collective bargaining agreements or by custom and practice of the workplace.
• Exclude union stewards and similar union representatives, such as a member of a safety committee or a bargaining committee, from having to file Form LM-30.
• Create an administrative exemption whereby union officials would generally need to report only loans – such as home mortgages – from bona fide credit institutions if the terms of such loans are on terms more favorable than those available to the public.
• Limit the reporting obligation with respect to interests in and payments from employers that compete against employers represented by the official’s union or that the union actively seeks to represent, modify the scope of reporting with respect to payments from certain trusts and unions, and exempt union officials from reporting payments they receive from trusts or, as a general rule, from unions.
• Hold union officers and employees to the same reporting obligations under the LMRDA.

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.

This emphasis on transparency and private sector education and empowerment was geared toward preparing America’s workforce for the 21^st century, all the while protecting the taxpayer by achieving cost savings in the Department’s discretionary budget of 19 percent in real terms since 2001.

The Obama Administration’s agenda is very different.

The first order of business has been rolling back those pesky union transparency regulations that allowed watchdog groups, the media and union members to know how union dues are spent.

Next, rather than getting out of the way and allowing the private sector engine to create jobs, the Obama Administration is hiring hundreds more OSHA and Wage and Hour inspectors with their job descriptions revised away from helping companies comply with the law to strictly writing citations for as much fine money as can possibly be warranted.

Believe it or not, in spite of record lows in workplace injuries, OSHA inspectors are now financially incentivized to write citations with heavy fines encouraged.  This is akin to making a police officer’s income directly related to how many tickets he/she writes.  If you have the misfortune of getting pulled over, you know that it is going to cost you big time.

Continuing on the enforcement front, it is instructive that President Obama’s appointee to be the top lawyer in the Department is Patricia Smith who currently serves as the head of the New York State Department of Labor.  In New York, Smith created a program that empowers unions to conduct wage and hour inspections of employers – typically, non-union employers.  This powerful coercion tool is conducted under the guise of ensuring that employees are treated fairly, but actually allows a union to target employers for organizing programs using this threat as a cudgel against that business.

The theme of expanding private sector union membership permeates the entire Obama labor agenda from the recently announced deal on the health care bill which exempts union members from paying a tax on what is deemed to be Cadillac health care insurance, to the Orwellian named Employee Free Choice Act that strips employees of secret ballot union elections, to Obama appointees changing union election rules that have stood for 75 years in order to help unions organize Delta Airlines.

This emphasis on expanding union membership, even at the expense of job creation, can be seen in one of the Administration’s early acts – to require Project Labor Agreements (PLAs) for federally funded projects.  PLAs require scale union wages be paid on all federally funded construction at an estimated cost of between 16-18%.

That’s shovel ready money that is employing fewer workers for the taxpayer dollar – all to force work into union shops and increase union dues payments.  Rather than employing more workers in this time of economic crisis, Obama instead has chosen to employ fewer people per taxpayer dollar in order to ensure that union dues payments go up.  Of course, the poster child for PLA projects is the notorious Boston Big Dig that ran billions of dollars of cost overruns while having to redo much of the work due to poor workmanship.  Of course what else can you expect when using union labor is more important than getting the job done.

PLA’s are not the only example of this Administration putting union membership ahead of job creation.  Amazingly, one of the requirements for consideration to receive a piece of the $100 million in “green job grants” was a partnership with a union affiliated group.  While union affiliation has nothing to do with whether or not a job is green or not, these grants are structured to force companies competing for these grants to employ union labor and at the least give labor affiliated organizations a piece of the pie.

At this writing, the 60 vote filibuster proof Democratic Senate was predicted to go down in flames in Massachusetts.  As a result, regulators, appointees to the National Labor Relations Board and Administrative Law judges are likely to be at the forefront of employment policy.  One name stands out as perhaps the symbol of the changes that we are likely to see in the Obama Administration – Craig Becker.

The Wall Street Journal calls Becker, “labor’s secret weapon”.  So who is he?

Becker is a yet to be confirmed appointee who would be the deciding vote on the National Labor Relations Board – the decision making body on the rules and validity of union organizing elections.

Instead of being a fair arbiter, Becker has advocated for extensive restrictions on employer communications with employees preceding a union organizing vote.  He has gone so far as to call for employers to be barred from attending NLRB hearings about elections, and not allowing employers to  challenge results even when evidence of union misconduct is present.  If confirmed it is likely that Craig Becker, not Hilda Solis, will have the lasting impact  on labor relations whether Congress passes the Employee Free Choice Act or not.

You might ask yourself, why is this Administration feverishly working to tilt the employment playing field dramatically toward the unions at the expense of real job creation?

The answer may be found in those very union disclosure reports that the Obama Administration doesn’t want you to see.

Big Labor is broke and desperate.  Declining membership combined with hundreds of millions in political expenditures to elect this Administration and Congress have left them on the financial ropes.

To understand the severity of their situation, you only have to go to the Wall Street Journal which reports that the AFL-CIO has more liabilities than assets, and a key member of their Finance Board worries that, “insolvency may be just around the corner.”  Further, Number One White House visitor, Andy Stern’s SEIU’s, is in severe financial trouble with his pension plans upside down and the union’s liabilities totalling almost 80% of its assets, and Jimmy Hoffa, Jr.’s International Brotherhood of Teamsters faces a pension disaster as its Central States Pension Fund teeters on ruin with an asset to liability ratio of only 43%.  In short, Big Labor’s finances are worse than a Wall Street mortgage derivatives fund in 2008, and like Wall Street, they are looking for government to bail them out.

Big Labor has bet their entire future on this Administration and this Congress.  Not able to compete in an environment where workers are safer than ever before, and there is a big screen in every living room, Big Labor needs the rules changed in order to survive, no matter the harm done to America and to workers across our nation.

As 2009 fades away, President Obama has decided to let disclosure of hundreds of millions of dollars in forced-union-dues disclosure fade away too. Under current law and regulations valid until December 30th, union bosses were supposed to carefully document the billions of dollars they extract from workers as a condition of employment that they in turn pour into front groups and other “funds” each year.

A large part of the billions were about to be made public and reported on a Department of Labor disclosure form known as the Form T-1 Annual Report. But, that won’t happen now!

According to Bureau of National Affairs, Inc, “The Labor Department is issuing a final rule that extends for one year the deadlines for unions to file Form T-1 Trust Annual Report Reports.”

After allowing only 11 days of comments from the public, the Obama Administration postponed requiring reports for another year. During 2010, the Obama Administration states that it intends to completely eliminate the financial disclosure.

Again, the Obama Administration is blatantly paying back union bosses at the expense of rank-and-file workers.

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.

This looks like the same old Washington insider influence that Presidential Candidate Obama, President-Elect Obama, and President Obama promised that he would not allow.

But, there is more.  Not only are Solis and lawyer Greenfield potentially violating President Obama’s declared prohibition against conflicts-of-interest, there are many more union insiders at the Department.   The Senior Advisor to Department of Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, Mary Beth Maxwell, greatly benefits from this rescission because she was the Executive Director of ARAW.  ARAW’s financial activities while Maxwell was in charge are currently due to be disclosed.  However, in eleven days these ARAW financial disclosures will be lost forever.

If you want to take action, you have eleven days to make your comments and to demand that the DOL stop this nonsense.

To comment on these regulations at the official site, click here, your comments should be identified by RIN 1215-AB75 (Document ID LMSO-2009-0004-0001).  Click Submit Comment next to the pencil and paper image.

ACT NOW, if you want to be heard.  And, please feel free to comment on BigGovernment.com comments section below and share with us your actions.

In addition to this, documents made public during an intra-union California lawsuit and obtained by a “BigGovernment researcher” (posted on NRTWC.org’s Scribd, seen below) reveal that SEIU Treasurer Anna Burger recommended that the union use general treasury money, much collected from employees as a condition of employment, to promote Stern’s book, A Country that Works.

It’s not as if Stern has never filed a conflict-of-interest disclosure report; in fact, he has filed two in 2004 and one in 2005. But, why has he not filed any reports related to his special book deal?

SEIU President Andy Stern’s Book Advance and Past Conflict of Interest Reports (LM-30s)

Unfortunately for rank and file workers forced to pay dues or fees to the SEIU, rather than spending its resources investigating potential LMRDA violations, the Obama Labor Department (DOL) is busy rescinding conflict-of-interest and other union financial reporting requirements.

When President John F. Kennedy, then a U.S. Senator, introduced the bill that would become the LMRDA, Kennedy said:

The committee-reported bill is based on the legislation approved by the Senate last year and thus it too implements the remaining recommendations of the McClellan committee. In brief, the bill, S. 1555, would accomplish the following: (1) Full reporting and public disclosure of union internal processes; (2) Full reporting and public disclosure of union financial operations;… (4) Criminal penalties for failure to make such reports or for filing false reports; (5) Criminal penalties for false entries in and destruction of union records; (6) Full reporting and public disclosure of financial transactions and holdings, if any, by union officials which might give rise to conflicts of interest…

The Congress should check the abuses in order to foster the national labor policy. The Government which vests in labor unions the power to act as exclusive bargaining representative must make sure that the power is used for the benefit of workers and not for personal profit.

The committee bill attacks the problem by requiring union officers and employees to file reports with the Secretary of Labor disclosing to union members and the general public any investments or transactions in which their personal financial interests may conflict with their duties to the members. … The bill is drawn broadly enough, however, to require disclosure of any personal gain which an officer or employee may be securing at the expense of their union members.

The LMRDA specifically requires labor bosses like Stern to disclose “any payment of money or other thing of value (including reimbursed expenses) which he or his spouse or minor child received directly or indirectly from any employer.” The exceptions under the LMRDA do not apply to Stern’s payments from Simon & Schuster.

President Obama and his Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis are busy undermining the intent of the LMRDA. For example, Obama’s Labor Department rescinded disclosure of union bosses’ perks in mid-October. And, the Labor Department publicly states that it intends to rescind conflict-of-interest disclosure and eliminate teacher union financial disclosure.

Kennedy’s introduction continued:

The financial conduct of labor unions and their officers is a proper concern of the Federal Government. This is so because the funds that pass through union treasuries and for which unions and their officers are responsible are very large, and the uses to which these funds are put have a substantial impact on the Nation’s economy.

Furthermore, if unions are to enjoy [forced union monopolistic] rights such as are guaranteed to them by the National Labor Relations Act and the Railway Labor Act, they ought also to be held responsible for abuses that have accompanied the exercise of these rights by some union leaders…

If any person who is required to make a report under this title fails to file or files a report which the Secretary of Labor believes is incomplete or false, the Secretary is directed to institute a full investigation armed with the power of subpoena…

Furthermore, if any union officer is convicted under these sections~ the labor organization is required by section 305(b) to remove him. If the union fails, it is subject. to criminal prosecution under section 305(c). The committee bill also forbids payment of fines or defense costs by a labor organization or employer for a person indicted or convicted of a violation of the act…

RACKETEERING, CORRUPTION, AND CONFLICTS OF INTEREST Widespread public concern over internal conditions in labor unions has resulted from sensational stories about the activities of criminal elements who forced their way into the labor movement and exploited the workers whom they pretended to serve…

Racketeering, crime, and corruption must be stamped out in the labor and management field as elsewhere. The committee bill carries strong measures for driving criminals from labor unions. Its provisions will also bring to light possible conflicts of interest and similar shadowy transactions through which unscrupulous union officials and employers sacrifice the welfare of employees to personal advantage.

Until the power to force workers, against their will, to pay dues to a labor union in order to keep or get a job is abolished, Big Labor Bosses should be held to the standards of the LMRDA. Will the DOL uphold these rules? The Obama Administration’s rescissions of union financial disclosure make it easier for union bosses to conceal their perks and insider deals. If DOL will not enforce the rules should we expect union bosses to follow them?

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.

The Obama Labor Department has been positioning themselves to rollback recent changes to the congressionally mandated union financial disclosure reports for unions with receipts of $250,000 plus.

And now they have announced that they are eliminating disclosure designed to protect millions of workers who are forced to pay dues as a condition of employment.  The specific disclosures being rescinded, among other things, exposed labor boss perks like John Sweeney’s alleged million dollar payment in 2000.  Now, Big Labor Union Bosses who receive special payments can continue to hide these payments from workers who are forced to subsidize them.

Obama’s Labor Department Lame Red Herring: Violators will Incur a Burden

According to the Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. (BNA), the Obama Administration’s so-called “reasoning” for rescinding the rule is that it imposes a burden on recalcitrant union officers who have failed to file union disclosure reports.  BNA’s headline, “DOL Rescinds LM-2/LM-3 Rule, Citing Burden On Small Unions and Need for More Review” captures the spin.

The Department completely ignored the federal privilege which grants union officials the power to have workers fired for failure to pay union dues as a condition of getting and keeping a job.  That’s the real burden, being forced to pay for union bosses’ perks and not even having the opportunity to see where your money goes.

Here is the Labor Department’s rescission argument in a nutshell: a few unions may be burdened by enforcing this rule’s consequences on unions that fail to follow reporting rules.  Big Labor apologists at the Labor Department are not telling you that only unions that continuously neglect filing financial reports will be required to file more detailed reports.  If unions file reports on time (a requirement since 1960), then there will likely be zero new burden – making the Department’s excuse a complete red herring.  Only non-compliant unions will be forced to deal with the so-called burden, an outcome that is the result of its own irresponsible behavior.  

In 2005, there were 1,275 labor unions that were over a year late in filing financial reports.  Part of the rule being rescinded by Secretary Solis was an effort to reduce this problem.

It is pure politics to rescind a disclosure rule designed to protect workers from irresponsible union bosses when only bad actors would have been required to provide more disclosure.  Shouldn’t union bosses who fail to file simple disclosures be required to provide more information? Why would the Labor Department not want to bring these bad actors into compliance? Solis provides no reasons.  

The Department chose to kill the entire rule because of this red herring, and now forced-dues funded perks enjoyed by many Big Labor Bosses will be obscured.  Hardly an example of a more transparent government that President Obama has promised; rather it is insider Washington as usual.

In fact, The National Right To Work  Legal Defense Foundation’s believes that that the repeal of this rule exceeds the Secretary’s authority.  The Foundation states that the authority granted in the Labor-Management Disclosure Act only permits the Secretary to make rules that aid in the prevention of the evasion of Act; and clearly allowing less disclosure cannot aid in the prevention of evasion of disclosure. 

The next union disclosure target will likely be the remaining LM-2 report that has exposed hundreds of thousands dollars of forced teacher union dues going to ACORN and millions more going to other radical organizations.  Prior to 2005, these kinds of details were unseen.  If Obama’s Big Labor Department continues to focus on protecting union bosses rather than workers, then the meaningful information about union officials use of forced dues will be obscured in the Department’s darkening windows of disclosure.

This is just the first of several Labor Department planned steps to repeal and rewrite important regulations designed to protect individual workers rather than union bosses.  If the Department’s handling of this rescission is any example, then more abuses of the regulatory process lay ahead.