Drown Union Reps In Paperwork

Drown Union Reps In Paperwork

Submitted by Isaiah J. Poole on August 16, 2007 - 1:00pm.

A federally-imposed reporting requirement goes into effect today that is a transparent attempt by the Bush administration to intimidate union activists and hamper union activity. The tactic is to do to unions what conservatives complain liberals do to businesses: Bog them down in needless paperwork.

The rule would require thousands of shop stewards and others union volunteers to file a detailed financial disclosure form to the Department of Labor, which would then post the form on the Internet. The form in question is known as the "LM-30," formally the Labor Organization Officer and Employee Report. The final ruling was published in the Federal Register on July 2.

The nine-page form, which is so long the Office of Management and Budget estimates it would take at least two hours to fill out, is ostensibly intended to help union members ascertain if their representatives have financial conflicts of interest that would affect their ability to represent their members.

But the form is already required of union leaders. The problem is that the new reporting requirement reaches far beyond people who are even in a position to be "corrupt union bosses" - the straw men and women the conservatives behind this rule are trying to knock down - in an effort to make rank-and-file people think twice before helping their fellow workers file grievances or do other union-related activity. And, bear in mind, the rule is not a response to union members demanding more information; in fact, as the department concedes in the Federal Register, 300 comments about the reporting rule were received from unions or union members, "most of whom were critical of all or parts of the proposal."

Union members who do union work while on company time would have to report the amount of their salary they received while doing union business. They would also have to report such items as stock they hold in their employer as well as loans and other financial relationships with employers the union represents or seeks to represent. The financial relationship could be as benign as a credit card or mortgage held by a bank with which either the union or employer does business, according to officials at the AFL-CIO who have studied the new rule. The reporting requirements extend to financial dealings of spouses and children. The Labor Department has a tutorial on who would be affected and how.

The anti-union National Alliance for Worker and Employer Rights cites "several cases where conflicts of interest and criminal conduct should have been prevented" as justification for the rules - but none of the cases cited involve the level of union representatives who would be swept up by the new rules. (Besides, when was the last time someone engaged in financial illegality spelled out the details in a federal form?)

The rule is an astonishing product for an administration that constantly talks about the need to lower the paperwork burdens on business. But it is not surprising coming from the shop of Elaine Chao, the most-anti-worker Department of Labor secretary in recent history and the wife of Senate Obstruction Leader Mitch McConnell.

The sad truth is that there are so many political outrages committed by this administration that this attack on worker rights has slipped under the radar. But labor's allies in Congress should take a serious look at this, and write language into the Department of Labor's budget to stop it in its tracks.