Dept. of Labor Tightening Unions Financial Disclosure Rules

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Dept. of Labor (DOL) has announced that it is changing the requirements for internal financial disclosures of unions requiring more details on finances and spending, the AP report on the 8th.

Unions are required annually to submit forms to the DOL detailing their financial information, but Federal officials have decided that the current forms lack enough detail to assure that unions aren’t engaging in fraud. The DOL is also proposing that smaller unions can use the less detailed forms unless they fall under indictment or other legal troubles which then will find them required to fill out the more detailed forms.

The full info on the proposed changes will be released next week. But the AP detailed some of those changes.

• Asking union officials and employees making more than $10,000 to itemize their benefits like life insurance, pensions and deferred compensation. The current form allows benefits to be combined and disclosed as one number, leaving the amount of individual benefits undisclosed.
• Requiring disclosure of expenses when the money is not reimbursed directly to the union employee or official. Labor officials say indirect reimbursement, when payment for expenses goes to the vendor instead of to the employee or official, currently does not have to be disclosed on the forms.
• Requiring unions to disclose who bought or sold any union asset worth more than $5,000. The current form only requires disclosure of the sale.
• And requiring itemization of certain cash receipts of $5,000 or more.

These are the kinds of oversight actions against unions that will cease once Democrats get into a controlling majority in Congress, of course. These sorts of things will certainly be rolled back allowing unions, traditionally steeped in corruption and criminal action, to have far more leeway to go about their business unrestrained by government.

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