Now that the Republicans will soon control the House, everyone expects President Obama to start actively exercising his executive authority. But Beltway observers have been so focused on legislative battles that few people have bothered to notice the executive branch has already launched a major regulatory assault in order pay back Democrats’ union allies.
Almost all of the Obama administration’s changes to labor laws involve reducing union transparency, denying workers a chance to hold union leaders accountable or otherwise have a say in how their workplace is run.
Two weeks ago, the Department of Labor announced it was doing away with the requirement that unions fill out a Form T-1 detailing how union trusts — commonly used to hold strike funds — are spent.
Union trusts are often used for specious purposes. In 2008, the Mackinac Center in Michigan determined unions in that state had used such funds to sponsor NASCAR races and fund lavish receptions at political conventions and in Las Vegas.
The Obama Labor Department has also rescinded tougher union disclosure requirements on the standard union financial disclosure form, the LM-2. “The old versions of the forms provided union members with virtually no useful information about how their union spent their dues,” observed Heritage Foundation labor expert James Sherk.
There were concrete signs that the new requirements were improving union governance. In Colorado, a longtime food workers union head was ousted in a union election after an unassuming grocery clerk campaigned against his corruption. The LM-2 data revealed that he had paid both his wife and son six-figure salaries with union dues.
Within a few months of that election, the Labor Department’s Office of Labor Management Standards gutted the LM-2 requirements, announcing it “will refrain from initiating enforcement actions against union officers and union employees based solely on the failure to file the [latest version of the LM-2] report.”
Hilda Solis, Obama’s secretary of labor, argues that LM-2 transparency requirements are onerous and unnecessary. But that doesn’t square with the facts. Since 2001, OLMS has indicted more than 1,000 union officials, winning at least 929 convictions for a wide range of criminal activities, including fraud, misrepresentation and embezzlement. Workers have won $93 million in restitution of misspent union funds.
No wonder a 2004 poll by the Mackinac Center found that only 42 percent of union workers believed the bulk of union funds were spent “helping workers get better pay, benefits and working conditions.”
Outside of the Labor Department, Obama gave radical union lawyer Craig Becker a recess appointment to the National Labor Relations Board after his nomination was rejected in a bipartisan vote by the Senate.
Becker, who formerly represented the AFL-CIO, SEIU and other top unions, has brazenly ignored the obvious conflicts of interest that attend his service on the NLRB. He refused, for example, to recuse himself from a case earlier this year involving his former employer, the SEIU.
Becker also recently voted to revisit a 2007 NLRB decision, despite having filed a brief as a lawyer in the original case, which involves “card check.” That’s the union-favored process that abolishes the secret ballot in workplace representation elections.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the incoming chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government reform, has questioned Becker’s conduct. Come January, Issa will have subpoena power and can be expected to summon the NLRB member to explain himself under oath.
House Republicans should demand explanations from Obama, Solis and Becker. The American people need to know how hiding union expenditures and denying workers a secret ballot in workplace elections can possibly be a good thing for anybody other than union bosses and their favored politicians.
Mark Hemingway is an editorial page staff writer for The Examiner. He can be reached at mhemingway@washingtonexaminer.com.
