Union Member Seeks to Block Obama Labor Department’s Efforts to Roll Back Union Disclosure Rules

Department guts disclosure rule that has exposed numerous corrupt union boss schemes, let rank-and-file members know how dues are spent

Washington, DC (May 23, 2011) – With free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, a Maryland county government employee is asking a federal court to stop the Obama Administration from allowing union bosses to conceal lavish and corrupt union expenditures from workers.

Chris Mosquera, a member of a Municipal County Government Employee Local of the United Food and Commercial Worker (UFCW) union, filed the lawsuit against Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for rescinding a union boss disclosure rule which would make it less difficult for workers to hold union officials accountable.

Unions covered by the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA) with total annual receipts of $250,000 or more are currently required to submit annual financial statements to the U.S. Department of Labor. LM-2 forms are the public disclosure documents for these larger unions and are available online on the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) website.

These forms have helped workers and citizen activists expose many unscrupulous union boss schemes, including lavish benefits to high-ranking union officials and loyalists, superfluous spending on union boss transportation (including private jets), and shady political spending (such as the Service Employees International Union bosses’ links to the disgraced political organization ACORN).

Read the entire release here.

Citizen Activist Seeks to Bring Union Boss Lobbying Disclosure Battle to Michigan Supreme Court

Teacher union bosses hiding taxpayer-funded political communications from public

Detroit, MI (January 28, 2010) – With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation, a citizen activist announced today he will file an appeal with the Michigan Supreme Court in an ongoing public disclosure battle over the use of school district e-mail systems for union political activities.

In 2007, political activist Chetly Zarko from DeWitt – invoking Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) disclosure law – requested e-mail communications among Howell Education Association (HEA) union brass regarding heated collective bargaining negotiations between the Howell Public School (HPS) system and union officials. The HEA union is a local affiliate of the Michigan Education Association and National Education Association unions.

At the time of the collective bargaining conflict, Zarko suspected union boss lobbying was occurring at taxpayer expense. Zarko is seeking the release of approximately 5,500 e-mails between the union hierarchy and teachers.

Click here to read the full release.

Union Watchdog Files Second Disclosure Request to Investigate Obama Labor Department Stonewalling

Media report indicates Department of Labor officials are “in a tizzy and freaking out” over federal lawsuit

Washington, DC (December 2, 2009) – The National Right to Work Foundation has filed new disclosure demands on the heels of its lawsuit to compel the Department of Labor (DOL) to release information related to high-ranking officials’ connections to powerful union lobbying interests.

A media report indicates DOL officials have deliberately ignored disclosure laws, and Right to Work attorneys are seeking internal DOL records backing up the report.

National Right to Work originally lodged a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request last April citing concerns about Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, who previously held a key leadership position at the Big Labor-front group “American Rights at Work,” and Deborah Greenfield, who was a lawyer for the AFL-CIO involved in a lawsuit challenging DOL union disclosure regulations that she now oversees as an administration appointee.

For the last seven months, the Obama Administration has stonewalled the Foundation’s FOIA request seeking disclosure of the high-ranking DOL officials’ contacts with union operatives. Late last month, Right to Work attorneys filed suit in federal court to force the Obama Administration to fulfill its obligations under the Freedom of Information Act.

Subsequent media coverage has revealed DOL officials apparently decided to ignore the Foundation’s FOIA request, but facing the lawsuit and negative publicity is now reconsidering. Additionally, one media report cited a high-placed source stating that panicked DOL officials “are in a tizzy and freaking out” because of the Foundation’s lawsuit.

(Read the full press release)

After President Barack Obama made numerous promises for a more transparent government, the Department of Labor (DOL) has, for nearly six months, hidden Big Labor insiders Hilda Solis and Deborah Greenfield activities from National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

Witnessing the Administration's corrupt Big Labor political paybacks, the Foundation swiftly sprang into action requesting all documents showing exchanges between Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and union bosses and all documentation regarding policy enforcement concerning Big Labor, the pro-compulsory unionism group American Rights at Work, and ACORN.  The Foundation also seeks all documents showing communications between AFL-CIO union lawyer Deborah Greenfield and her former bosses.

Greenfield, a member of Obama's presidential transition team, is a high-ranking official inside Obama’s Labor Department. One item sending red flags is the fact that Greenfield is an AFL-CIO lawyer in a lawsuit challenging DOL union disclosure rules -- the very disclosures that the Obama Administration intends to end.  Greenfield and her fellow union partisans have fought for and succeeded in rolling back union disclosure rules that provide details to rank-and-file workers about the use and misuse of their forced union dues.

Freedom@Work readers may remember that the Foundation filed its disclosure demand (pdf) in April.  Foundation attorneys are now reiterating that demand and gearing up to litigate if necessary.  (To view a pdf copy of the appeal, click here.)

Upon entering office, President Barack Obama claimed his Administration would be transparent -- but his Administration's behavior has failed to keep the President’s word.  The Obama Administration's delay in this particular raises questions that DOL may be attempting to cover up some embarrassing ethics violations.

You can watch the Foundation's video regarding the original FOIA request here on our Youtube.com channel.

On May 12, the Department of Labor issued a notice proposing a few minor rule changes aimed at improving union transparency. To help workers get more information on union expenditures they're frequently obligated to fund as a condition of employment, the new regulations would revise parts of the LM-2 form, a financial disclosure report filed by unions with over $250,000 in annual revenue.

Among other things, the new regulations would require unions to disclose the amount of money spent on benefits for individual union officers, to report indirect monetary disbursements, to itemize certain receipts of $5,000 or more, and to disclose the identity of the purchaser or seller in transactions involving union assets.

Sounds pretty modest, right? In the past, we've blogged about the false promise of reducing union corruption simply by regulating financial disclosure. That said, Freedom@Work certainly doesn't oppose measures that promote greater transparency. In fact, Foundation staff attorneys filed comments (.pdf) with the Department of Labor in support of the proposed rule changes. We believe that workers have a right to know what activities their mandatory dues payments are funding.

But Senator Ted Kennedy and Representative George Miller beg to differ. In a public letter (.pdf) to the Department of Labor, they claim that the burden of financial accountability (for funds that are essentially handed to them on a silver platter, I might add) is simply too onerous for union bosses to bear (emphasis mine):

The NPRM also advances a misguided proposal that makes it more likely that smaller local unions will face dramatic increases in their financial record-keeping and reporting obligations. The officers of small local unions often work full-time for a represented employer while simultaneously performing their duties as union officers. Their resources are small, and their access to professional assistance - including lawyers and accountants - can be limited.

Senator Kennedy's newfound enthusiasm for easing America's regulatory burden is a bit surprising - one wonders why he recently introduced legislation requiring restaurants to list nutritional info for every single menu item - and wholly disingenuous. Local unions are affiliated with larger national and international unions precisely because these entities are supposed to provide "access to professional assistance."

Kennedy and Miller's blatant hypocrisy is particularly rankling because union bosses have repeatedly used this justification to extract more mandatory dues-payments from nonunion employees. In Lehnert v. Ferris (1991), for example, Foundation attorneys argued before the Supreme Court that nonmember workers should not be forced to pay for union "services" provided from other union affiliates. However, union lawyers successfully claimed that "services" provided by the union's parent organization justified additional compulsory dues-payments. Here's the crux of Justice Blackmun's majority opinion (emphasis mine):

Because the essence of the affiliation relationship is the notion that the parent union will bring to bear its often considerable economic, political, and informational resources when the local is in need of them, that part of a local's affiliation fee which contributes to the pool of resources potentially available to it is assessed for the bargaining unit's protection, even if it is not actually expended on that unit in any particular membership year.

In other words, support from Big Labor's national affiliates is part and parcel of the mandatory agency fee package. If unwilling workers are funding unions' "considerable economic, political, and informational resources," shouldn't local affiliates have access to the resources they need to comply with these modest disclosure requirements?

This sordid episode demonstrates the intellectual dishonesty of union bosses and their political allies. Kennedy and Miller should just cut the crap. Like their Big Labor cronies, they just don't want workers to see the extent to which they are being ripped off. Period.