New Report: The Bush Labor Department ‘Beyond Justice’

by Mike Hall, Dec 11, 2007

Corporate polluters, companies with spotty safety records, big oil conglomerates, banks, broadcasters, job-exporting manufacturers and just about every member of the corporate community has found it much easier to do business in the past seven years. The Bush administration has stroked their boardroom friends by easing or killing regulation after regulation designed to curb corporate misbehavior.

But the Bush administration has a much different standard when it comes to unions. A new report shows how the Bush administration has “shoveled significantly more tax dollars” into the Labor Department office charged with monitoring union finances. At the same time, Bush loaded the office with political extremists who are carrying out a Newt Gingrich/Grover Norquist strategy to destroy unions.

In Beyond Justice: Bush Administration’s Labor Department Abuses Labor Union Regulatory Authorities, author Scott Lilly writes:

The underlying purpose, of course, is to undermine the reputation of the labor union movement through a classic political misinformation campaign—all under the supervision of a lifelong partisan political operative whose career has been dedicated to the destruction of his political opponents.

Lilly, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, examines the Bush administration’s use of the Office of Labor Management Standards (OLMS) to shackle unions and union activists with new and onerous reporting rules.

Lilly writes that in 1992, Gingrich urged then-Labor Secretary Lynn Martin to significantly increase union reporting requirements because it would “weaken our opponents and encourage our allies.”

Long-term Gingrich ally and advisor, Grover Norquist, stated the intention somewhat more bluntly, “We’re going to crush labor as a political entity” and ultimately “break unions.”

The first (George H.W.) Bush administration tried to push new rules through, but that anti-union effort died when Bill Clinton won the presidency. However, the second Bush administration tipped its hand that it certainly intended to follow through on the Gingrich/Norquist strategy and even cut deeper in a move to bleed unions when it appointed Don Todd to head OLMS.

Todd was neither an attorney, nor an individual with extensive experience in labor issues. Many elements of his background remain unclear….There are some things about Todd’s background that are clear. Since at least the late 1970s he has been involved in the strident attack side of Republican campaign politics.

Although Todd is not a household name, his political handiwork is: Todd was behind the race-baiting Willie Horton ads for George H.W. Bush’s 1988 campaign for president.

In addition to Todd, Bush moved several other campaign operatives into the OLMS, and as Lilly writes:

It didn’t take the new team long to move forward in adopting policies that went well beyond the recommendations by Gingrich and Norquist. Their strategy appears to have had two principal objectives.

• Greatly increase the time, effort and expense to labor unions, their officers and employees of complying with department reporting requirements.
• Use information gleaned from Labor Department investigations of union officials and employees along with data from expanded union reporting requirements to launch a public relations effort to discredit unions and weaken their ability to organize and act on behalf of their members.

First, Todd and his OLMS cronies greatly revised and expanded what are called LM-2 reporting forms that all international and many local unions must file. The new forms radically increase the amount of paperwork imposed on unions. The Center for American Progress report notes in this regard:

One thing that is clear, however, is that the reporting is expensive. Most unions have spent considerable sums in purchasing new software packages and have had to ask nearly all employees to engage in additional record-keeping and pay for significant additional hours of work by both their internal and external accounting teams. The general counsels and outside attorneys that support most unions have been forced to divert large amounts of time from other issues facing their organizations to interpret the filing regulations and monitor their organizations’ compliance.

One relatively small international union has estimated the cost of software modification alone to be close to a million dollars, and administrative personnel in that union expect that the costs for most unions will be far greater given the nature of their computer systems. To paraphrase Grover Norquist, “Every dollar that is spent on disclosure and reporting is a dollar that can’t be spent on other labor union activities.”

In 2005, OLMS turned its attention to another union-reporting requirement known as LM-30 reports. Union officers and employees who might have personal financial dealings with a company represented by their unions must file the then relatively simple two-page LM-30 form.

But the new LM-30 requirements force union officers and employees to disclose personal financial information—such as disclosure of mortgage and car loans and credit card transaction. The new requirements also apply to shop stewards or rank-and-file union members who are granted permission by their employers to engage in union business, such as contract negotiations or safety committee meetings on company time. OLMS will post the reports on the Internet. The new requirements, go into effect in 2008, and will require incredible efforts to comply.

The requirements place an extraordinary burden on filers to obtain information that is not readily available. For instance, any union employee, official, or member of a union who is obliged to file an LM-30 if he or she has financial arrangements that constitute a possible conflict of interest would be required to file if he or she had a mortgage or other form of loan from a financial institution that gets at least than 10 percent of its receipts from companies represented by the union and companies the union is attempting to organize. The individual would have to disclose the nature and size of each such loan.

If, for instance, an employee of the United Auto Workers has a home improvement loan from Citibank, he would need to determine what share of the receipts of Citibank come from not only the big three automakers, but all companies represented by the union—including all parts manufacturers and all companies that the UAW is attempting to organize..

Says Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.):

It’s unconscionable that laws meant to protect employees have turned into tools for harassing them.

Thanks to Trapper John for front-paging this report over at Daily Kos.

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