April 6th, 2010, Fairfax, VA—Obama Administration officials within the Labor Department were urged to not rescindunion disclosure rules in a letter released today from Americans for Limited Government (ALG).
ALG President William Wilson in the April 5 letter to the Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards blasted the Agency stating, “Rather than working feverishly to turn union financial transparency into a financial black hole the Department should get back to work investigating and bringing to justice those union leaders who steal from their members.”
The letter was prompted by Labor Department proposed rulemaking that would change two major Bush Administration labor disclosure requirements. Under the new Obama rules, labor unions with trust accounts would be allowed to hide both income and expenditures from those trusts from scrutiny by members, media and outside watchdog groups creating a whole new definition of “blind trust”.
The other major change would allow “intermediary” unions like the role the Alabama Education Association plays for the National Education Association, to not disclose their income or expenditures creating a dead end for those reporting on how the teachers unions influence the nation’s education policies.
Wilson concluded by stating, “When union leaders working with their former employees, who now function as Obama officials at the U.S. Department of Labor, eliminate the ability of the people to track the expenditure and collection of hundreds of millions of dollars by those very union leaders, it smells like the sewer of corruption that only DC politics can create.”
The Department of Labor has been charged with overseeing the financial activities of organized labor since the 1959 passage of the John F. Kennedy sponsored Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA). A law that was designed to provide for full disclosure of union finances. During the Bush Administration more than 900 union leaders were successfully prosecuted, with many as a direct result of financial reporting requirements.
A copy of the original letter to the Department of Labor is available from ALG at http://www.getliberty.org/files/T-1 Rescission NPRM ALG Comment 04_05_10.pdf.
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