Union Consultant Charged With Overseeing Union Financial Reports

(Source: May 2011 NRTWC Newsletter)

On his first full day as U.S. President, Barack Obama issued Executive Order 13490, otherwise known as the Ethics Executive Order.

Under E.O.13490, presidential appointees are required to sign a pledge affirming that, for two years after the day they are appointed, they will not “participate in any particular matter involving a specific party that includes a former employer or former client.”

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency,” Mr. Obama vowed.

Unfortunately, almost from the day E.O.13490 was first issued, the Obama Administration has repeatedly ignored its letter as well as its spirit when it comes to appointees whose job is to oversee and regulate labor unions.

Thousands of Union Bosses to Be Exempted From Disclosing Any Conflicts of Interest

Last month, the National Right to Work Committee issued a report on one of the most egregious examples of an Obama appointee making policies that clearly benefit his former union-boss clients: John Lund, now the director of the U.S. Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS).

Mr. Lund is a former employee of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE/AFL-CIO).

And he is currently on unpaid leave from the Madison-based University of Wisconsin School for Workers, of which the AFL-CIO and many other unions, as well as many union benefit funds, are clients.

But now Mr. Lund is responsible for overseeing federally-mandated union financial disclosures and criminal investigations regarding union financial irregularities and embezzlement!

“Barack Obama solemnly pledged in 2008 that working in his Administration would ‘not be about serving the interests of your former employer or your future employer,’” recalled Right to Work President Mark Mix.

“But it seems plain that serving the interests of his former and future Big Labor employers and clients is exactly what John Lund is up to at the OLMS.”

As an example, Mr. Mix pointed out that, just a couple of months into the Obama Administration, the OLMS announced a “non-enforcement policy” allowing thousands of union stewards to avoid disclosing payments they receive from employers for union activities that supposedly benefit employees.

Moreover, Mr. Lund reportedly now has in the works a permanent revision of conflict-of-interest reports (known as LM-30′s) that would exempt thousands of union officials from ever reporting payments they receive from employers for jobs they don’t actually have to do, that is, “no-show” jobs.

And Mr. Lund has already eliminated basic financial reporting requirements for many powerful and politically active teacher unions like the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC/NEA) and other union “intermediate bodies.”

Mark Mix Calls For Congressional Probe of Labor Department Cronyism

The “Obama Administration Personnel Alert” regarding John Lund is accessible to the public at www.nrtwc.org — the Committee web site. It has also been posted on Andrew Breitbart’s much-visited Big Government web site, and sent directly to key members of Congress.

“It’s long past time for the Obama Administration to start answering tough questions regarding union-boss cronyism in its Labor Department, and about John Lund in particular,” said Committee President Mix.

“In 2009 and 2010, when Big Labor Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress, there was no interest on Capitol Hill in pursuing such an investigation. That’s disappointing, but not surprising.

“Now that professedly pro-Right to Work elected officials control the U.S. House, there’s no plausible reason why Mr. Lund shouldn’t be called before a House committee to explain why he has opted not to comply with E.O.13490.

“Additionally, House investigators should invite Robert Cusick, the director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, to explain why the OGE is allowing Mr. Lund to flout this executive order, which is, after all, the law of the land.

“During his two-year tenure at the OLMS, Mr. Lund has cut the number of labor union investigators, rescinded disclosure of union officer benefits, eliminated financial reporting for so-called ‘intermediate’ unions, and dramatically reduced conflict-of-interest reporting.

“Such actions benefit Big Labor, but undercut the interests of Americans who are forced to pay union dues or fees as a condition of employment.

“How does making it easier for corrupt union officials to get away with mismanagement and fraud help working people? That’s not an easy question to answer, but John Lund should be given the opportunity to try.”

In addition, Reid is prepared to add radical SEIU & AFL-CIO lawyer, Craig Becker to the list of Obama nominees approved before Senator Brown arrives.

As the new U.S. Solicitor of Labor, President Obama’s nominee M. Patricia Smith will control the largest civilian pool of government lawyers after the Justice Department.

Then New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer appointed Smith Commissioner of the New York State Department of Labor (NYDOL). Having spent her entire working life as a government employee, Smith brings only bureaucratic experience to the table.

As NYDOL Commissioner, Smith used her position and federal funds to override a state hiring freeze to hire a politically connected union organizer as a state employee.

In her former NYDOL position, Smith fostered and named a program “Wage Watch” that created a direct and integral relationship between NYDOL government enforcement agents and the “program’s partners” who are Big Labor organizers and Big Labor front groups.

Then NYDOL Director of Strategic Enforcement and recently withdrawn Obama DOL Wage and Hour appointee, Lorelei Boylan referred to these Big Labor partners as NYDOL “community enforcers.”

In one giddy e-mail obtained by NRTW, Boylan wrote, “the ‘role of the commuity [sic] enforcer’ is where we will have to come up with original material.”

For a real world example of how this works let us take you back to the Clinton Administration’s Labor Department which colluded with Service Employees International Union (SEIU) organizers in an attempt to shakedown an employer to extract an agreement to hand his employees over to labor bosses. Watch the National Right To Work Committee’s interview with Randy Schaber (Link) and read the congressional investigative report (Link) that caused the firing of a Clinton appointee at the Labor Department in the 1990s.

It is past time to stop these political favors and manipulations of federal resources and laws to benefit Big Labor Bosses. And, that is exactly what we can expect with Smith’s confirmation as Solicitor of Labor. She did it in New York, and now she plans to do it across the USA.

Assistant Secretary Phyllis Borzi, Assistant Secretary Michael Kerr, and Assistant Secretary Jane Oates are other known DOL appointees who gave themselves ethics waivers.  Without public disclosure of the ethics pledges, it is impossible to determine if this self-administering of ethics waivers is Department-wide or even Obama Administration-wide.

Big Labor DOL insiders gave themselves personal exemptions from President Obama’s January 21, 2009 ethics Executive Order 13490 two-year ban from activity on behalf of former

Obama has filled DOL with Big Labor operatives and former union officials, and these insiders have wasted little time rolling back financial disclosure for union bosses, handing out multimillion dollar grants and contracts to Big Labor, and turning DOL enforcement into an arm of Big Labor’s forced-unionism organizing machine.

Top DOL officials have at least made a mockery of and worst completely violated the President’s executive order by cutting in half Obama’s ordered two-year moratorium.  It appears that the President has already lost control of the union operatives inside his own Administration.  But what can Obama do when he owes so much to Big Labor Bosses and the forced union dues they anted up for his election?

Congress and the Justice Department ought to investigate the Office of Government Ethics failure to enforce the Ethics Executive Order 13490 documented violations.

With all that is disclosed in the NRTWC report, there should be increasing pressure for Congress to investigate the Obama Administration’s repeal of several financial disclosures that include the proposed repealing of conflict-of-interest disclosures for Big Labor officials.

It looks like the Labor Department is the tail wagging the Administration dog.
NRTWC OBAMA ADMINISTRATION PERSONNEL ALERT: U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Lucia Solis –

A large part of the billions were about to be made public and reported on a Department of Labor disclosure form known as the Form T-1 Annual Report. But, that won’t happen now!

According to Bureau of National Affairs, Inc, “The Labor Department is issuing a final rule that extends for one year the deadlines for unions to file Form T-1 Trust Annual Report Reports.”

After allowing only 11 days of comments from the public, the Obama Administration postponed requiring reports for another year. During 2010, the Obama Administration states that it intends to completely eliminate the financial disclosure.

Again, the Obama Administration is blatantly paying back union bosses at the expense of rank-and-file workers.

Big Labor has fought the disclosure of information for thousands of “slush” funds and front groups since 2003.  By 2008, courts grew weary of Big Labor’s excuses for wanting to continue to hide billions in forced union dues that it transferred to groups like ACORN and the AFL-CIO’s American Rights At Work. 

Today, the Department published its intent to rescind these disclosures and to allow union bosses to ignore reporting until the Obama Administration disclosure rescission is final. 

Why did Big Labor want to stop these disclosures, referred to as Form T-1 Trust disclosures?  Because, these reports disclose the finances of every significant union controlled trust or Big Labor-front group.  In essence, this information provides the schematic of Big Labor-forced dues funded political operations.

These reports, if filed, will lead to more disclosures of ACORN financing and reveal more about the Big Labor-Front Group American Rights at Work, a political and lobbying operation, where Obama’s Labor Secretary served as Treasurer while a member of Congress..

Today’s Obama Administration’s notice reads in part:

The Department now seeks comments on a proposal to delay the filing due date of the initial Form T–1 reports, pending the outcome of the Department’s proposal to withdraw the October 2, 2008 rule.

The comment period on this proposal will close on December 14, 2009. [Eleven Days of Comments] Time is running out, to share your comments with the Department of Labor follow this link or click here to comment.

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, D.C. (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 [Mark Hemingway in the Washington Examiner] 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.

Today, Foundation attorneys filed another FOIA request this time for the DOL’s search plan and interoffice communications – including emails, meeting minutes, notes, and other interoffice correspondence – relating to the initial FOIA request.

“President Obama’s widely-touted promise of unparalleled transparency has been met with unparalleled secrecy,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “The Department of Labor’s deliberate stonewalling is unsettling. It suggests the administration is hiding damaging information about whether Hilda Solis and Deborah Greenfield are coordinating their activities with pro-compulsory unionism extremists.”

“Giving Big Labor undue influence over the Department’s rule-making and administrative oversight is a slap in the face of America’s independent-minded workers. The public deserves to know about any collusion between this administration and Big Labor bosses.”

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is a nonprofit, charitable organization providing free legal aid to employees whose human or civil rights have been violated by compulsory unionism abuses. The Foundation, which can be contacted toll-free at 1-800-336-3600, is assisting thousands of employees in over 200 cases nationwide. Its web address is http://www.nrtw.org/.

Transparency Should Apply to Union Bosses Too

In a memo to the heads of executive departments and agencies earlier this year, President Obama declared, “My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government.”  A noble sentiment – but it apparently doesn’t apply to the Department of Labor or the union bosses it’s charged with overseeing.

As the House Education and Labor Committee Republicans noted today, the U.S. Department of Labor has formally rescinded a series of reporting changes designed to enhance union disclosure.

The aim of these rule changes is to weaken union oversight requirements – a trend this Administration started with its FY 2010 budget, which cut $4.4 million from the Office of Labor Management Standards, more than a 10 percent reduction in its overall budget.  Judging by the profligate spending this Administration has applied to nearly every other department – giving the federal budget a nearly 10 percent boost in spending, cutting union oversight seems an odd place to “save money” – unless reducing transparency, and not saving money, were their aims. 

Part of the transparency roll back for union bosses includes the following items that the Labor Department will no longer require of unions:

• Disclose the total value of benefits received by union officers and employees;
• Disclose the names of parties buying and selling union assets; or
• Itemize union receipts

This isn’t the transparency the American people were promised.

Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is walking back on its promises of “openness” and “transparency” – and it’s rank-and-file union members who’ll pay the price.

And while the Republican Leader is right, he, as he has done in the past, either forgets, ignores, or leaves out the fact that 80% of these rank-and-file workers labor under contracts that force them to pay these dues and fees as a condition of employment.  While Chairman of the Education and Welfare Committee, the now Republican Leader failed to engage on the issue of forced unionism under federal law.  One wonders what he would do now – if he gets the chance.

Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis has abandoned the idea that union members should be able to see how their forced union dues money is being spent.  Gone is the union financial disclosure requirements set forth from the Bush Administration.  

Kevin Mooney has the story:

Never mind about those revised union financial disclosure requirements President Obama inherited from his predecessor. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis now says she won’t make union officials comply. Unions officials complained for eight years that regulations issued by Elaine Chao, President George W. Bush’s Labor Secretary, were more rigorous than required by the Labor Management and Reporting Disclosure Act (LMRDA), which calls for modestly detailed annual financial reports by unions with receipts of $250,000 or more.

The Bush-Chao regulations require union officials to disclose financial information that could aid union members’ seeking information on how their union leaders are spending dues money, and to help expose “no show jobs” that put paychecks for ghost employees into union coffers.

Before Bush took office, the reports were mostly ignored by the Labor Department. Now, it’s back to business-as-usual. A notice appeared this week on the department’s web site saying the Office of Labor Management Standards (OLMS), whose main job is enforcing LMRDA requirements, won’t be doing its job under Solis:

“Accordingly, OLMS will refrain from initiating enforcement actions against union officers and union employees based solely on the failure to file the report required by section 202 of the Labor-Management and Reporting Disclosure Act (LMRDA), 29 U.S.C. § 432, using the 2007 form, as long as individuals meet their statutorily-required filing obligation in some manner. OLMS will accept either the old Form LM-30 or the new one for purposes of this non-enforcement policy.”  Now that Obama-Solis are giving union officials a choice between the old and new forms, can you guess which one they will choose?

The union bosses are smiling because when it comes to the Obama Administration, you get what you pay for.

The Examiner newspaper rightfully objects:

President Barack Obama has often talked of the importance of transparency and accountability in government, and he has chalked up some landmark achievements in this area. As a senator, he co-sponsored, with Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., the Federal Financial Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 that established the USASpending.gov Web site to enable citizen tracking of federal expenditures. As president, he launched the Recovery.govWeb site to do the same with stimulus spending. 

Both sites have had and will have hiccups, but they are precedent-setters for which Obama deserves great credit. Unfortunately, transparency and accountability go out the window when they conflict with the demands of organized labor and environmentalists, two special-interest groups that are key supporters and contributors to Obama’s political campaigns. 

At the U.S. Department of Labor, Secretary Hilda Solis is moving rapidly to rescind Bush administration reforms that greatly strengthened reporting requirements that enable union members to see, via annual LM-2 reports, how their leaders are spending membership dues. In a recent Federal Register notice, Solis agreed with the preposterous assertion of Big Labor leaders that there was no proof members would benefit by knowing this financial information, and that compiling the report was too costly and time-consuming. 

Former Bush labor officials have also expressed concern about the Obama-Solis approach toward another union disclosure form, the LM-30, which requires shop stewards to report information needed to expose “no-show jobs” that funnel paychecks into union coffers instead of an actual employee’s bank account. Solis is reassuring the Big Labor bosses that she will not enforce the LM-30 reporting requirements.

Then there’s the case of Alan Carlin, the Environmental Protection Agency economist whose critical statistical analysis of a proposal for that agency to assume a leading role in regulating greenhouse gases was blatantly suppressed. Obama’s EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, and other senior agency officials made it clear to Carlin that his study was not supportive of the Obama administration’s policy and so would be buried in the bowels of bureaucracy. He was also instructed not to talk to the media. 

Carlin is a 38-year EPA veteran and a respected economist. His study pointed out the many flaws in the data used to support the U.N.’s case for human causes of global warming, notably with regard to the use of carbon-based fuels like oil and natural gas. Carlin was muzzled by representatives of the same president who repeatedly bashed President George W. Bush for allegedly “politicizing science.”

May 20, 2009

Form LM-2 and Form LM-3 Rulemaking: Comment Period Extended

The Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) will publish a notice in the Federal Register on May 21, 2009, extending the period for comments on the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) published on April 21, 2009 (74 FR 18172).  See link.

The April 21, 2009 NPRM proposed to rescind the final rule published on January 21, 2009 (74 FR 3677), which made several revisions to the current Form LM-2, used by the largest labor organizations to file their annual financial reports under the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, as amended, and established a procedure by which the Secretary of Labor may revoke, under certain circumstances, a particular labor organization’s authorization to file a simplified annual report, Form LM-3.  For more background on this rulemaking, please visit here.

The comment period for the proposed rescission of the January 21, 2009 final rule, which was to close on May 21, 2009, will now close on June 22, 2009.

For additional information, including how to submit comments on the proposal to rescind, please visit the Form LM-2 and Form LM-3 rulemaking page on the OLMS Web site at: link.

Thank you for subscribing to the OLMS Mailing List. We hope that you find this mailing informative. If you need to change your subscription email address or no longer wish to receive mailings from OLMS, please visit the OLMS Mailing List Subscription page at link.

“The Obama budget will actually slash one section of the Department of Labor’s enforcement apparatus – the section created by George Bush [actually created in 1959 by then-Sen. John F. Kennedy and others] to harass and “investigate” unions – the Office of Labor-Management Standards. That office, a favorite of the… …National Right to Work Committee, will be cut by 10 percent….”

 Here’s how the paper describes itself:

The People’s Weekly World / Nuestro Mundo is a national, grassroots weekly newspaper and the direct descendant of the Daily Worker. Published by Long View Publishing Co., the PWW reports on and analyzes the pressing issues and struggles of the day: for workers’ rights, peace, equality, social and economic justice, democracy, civil liberties, women’s rights, protection of the environment, and more.

The PWW is known for its partisan coverage. We take sides – for truth and justice. We are partisan to the working class, racially and nationally oppressed peoples, women, youth, seniors, international solidarity, Marxism and socialism. We enjoy a special relationship with the Communist Party USA, founded in 1919, and publish its news and views.

The Obama administration has delivered a strong message to crooked union bosses everywhere: happy days are here again.

On Thursday President Obama, who has pledged to usher in a new era of fiscal responsibility, touted $17 billion in proposed cuts to his $3.4 trillion budget. The media noted that about half of the reductions came out of the defense budget, but lost in most reports is the fact that the administration also slashed funding for the only entity in government tasked with policing unions.

Under the previous administration, the Labor Department beefed up the Office of Labor-Management Standards. During this time, the division’s actions led to 929 convictions of corrupt union officials and to the recovery of more than $93 million on behalf of union members. Yet the Obama administration has proposed slashing the unit’s budget by more than 9 percent, from $45 million in 2009 to $41 million in 2010.

Contrary to campaign promises to increase transparency and accountability, the Obama Administration has announced plans to rescind union accountability and financial transparency regulations implemented by the Department of Labor (DOL) during the Administration of George W. Bush.

These regulations make union officials more accountable to union members and deter fraud and embezzlement. The DOL has convicted hundreds of union officials over the past eight years. Rescinding these forms will facilitate fraud and harm union members.

Union Financial Transparency Regulations

On January 21, the DOL published regulations updating the Form LM-2, the annual financial disclosure report unions file with the DOL. Unions collect between 1 and 2 percent of their members’ earnings as dues, and union officers are required to spend that money on the workers’ behalf–they may not use union funds for their personal interest. The LM-2 revisions required unions to:

• Disclose the total value of all benefits received by union officers and employees;
• Disclose the names of parties buying and selling union assets; and
• Itemize union receipts (currently unions must itemize only expenditures).

The DOL also updated the LM-30 conflict of interest reporting form that union officers and employees must file. These forms bring to light situations where union officers receive gifts or otherwise benefit from companies that their union does business with. They deter sweetheart deals where companies that give “gifts” to union officers get union business on favorable terms. The revisions required more union officials (such as shop stewards) to report potential conflicts of interest.

An article in today’s Wall Street Journal by former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao may provide additional information for its pending comments. 

Chao provides  an interesting history of a very little office (Office of Labor-Management Standards) in the government that union bosses seem to disproportionately fear. 

The Obama administration likes to say that it is “pro-worker.” But something is amiss when its labor priorities are forcing unionization and labor contracts on American workplaces, and denying union members information on how their dues money is spent.

From 2001-2008, the Labor Department secured more than 1,000 union fraud-related indictments and 929 convictions. This enforcement record was accomplished even though the enforcement office accounts for less than 0.1% of the department’s budget. OLMS is the lone federal agency with the job of protecting worker interests in how their unions are managed. The last Congress increased President Bush’s budget request for the Labor Department by $956 million even as it targeted OLMS for a budget cut.

 That’s why the National Right To Work Committee launched a new information series to shine sunlight on Obama Administration personnel that will most assuredly try to expand the forced unionism privilege enjoyed by Big Labor.  The Right to Work Committee created this investigative video series to provide brief and important information about Obama personnel and their relationship with forced unionism.  (See attached Alert PDF and the AFL-CIO produced agenda for the Obama Administration, “AFL-CIO Turn Around America.”)

Our first video alert concerns AFL-CIO Associate General Counsel Deborah Greenfield, now Labor Secretary Hilda Solis’ Director of the Executive Secretariat…

 (see related National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation video and Freedom of Information Act Request (FOIA))

It is time to hold President Obama accountable for his promises.  The National Right to Work Committee provides this regular review of Obama Administration officials that can influence worker rights as a tool for you. 

• Please sign up for regular updates;
• Contact your U.S. Representatives and let them know that you aware of the shenanigans in Washington;
• Inform your friends;
• Sign up for our free newsletter; and
• Continue to visit our website for new Obama Administration Personnel Alerts.

However, Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which provides legal services to workers who say unions have violated their rights, called the rollback of union financial disclosures troubling.

“The department’s decision not to protect simple union disclosure protections creates increased vulnerability for American workers and should serve notice to legislators that now is not the time to grant union bosses more unchecked power over workers and our economy,” he wrote in a recent letter to the department.

He said the AFL-CIO would “benefit greatly” from the delay or rollback of expanded reporting rules. “It immediately allows the AFL-CIO to avoid financial disclosure that is beneficial and necessary to rank-and-file workers who are forced to pay union dues and fees to keep a job,” he said.

Jim Coppess, associate general counsel for the AFL-CIO, discounted the criticism. He said the Labor Department’s recent moves did nothing to affect the transparency of union financial reports or the ability of federal regulators to monitor expenditures.

From day one of the Obama era, union leaders want the lights dimmed on how they spend their mandatory member dues. The AFL-CIO’s representative on the Obama transition team for Labor is Deborah Greenfield, and we’re told her first inspection stop was the Office of Labor-Management Standards, or OLMS, which monitors union compliance with federal law.

Ms. Greenfield declined to comment, citing Obama transition rules, but her mission is clear enough. The AFL-CIO’s formal “recommendations” to the Obama team call for the realignment of “the allocation of budgetary resources” from OLMS to other Labor agencies. The Secretary should “temporarily stay all financial reporting regulations that have not gone into effect,” and “revise or rescind the onerous and unreasonable new requirements,” such as the LM-2 and T-1 reporting forms. The explicit goal is to “restore the Department of Labor to its mission and role of advocating for, protecting and advancing the interests of workers.” In other words, while transparency is fine for business, unions are demanding a pass for themselves.

With the corrupt SEIU (Service Employees International Union) essentially picking the next Secretary of Labor, don’t count on any effort to police the union bosses for at least the next four years.

They bought their fiefdom and now they want to rule it.