NEW YORK — Labor Department officials said yesterday that they would propose tougher reporting and disclosure requirements for the nation’s labor unions on Monday, a move some union officials say is intended to punish labor, the New York Times reported.
Under the proposed regulations, unions would have to detail how much money they spend each year on politics, lobbying, organizing and strike benefits and would have to itemize all expenditures above either a $2,000 or $5,000 threshold.
Victoria Lipnic, an assistant secretary of labor, said in an telephone interview that the Bush administration hoped the tougher disclosure requirements would discourage wrongdoing by union leaders.
“We’re doing this to improve the financial transparence, accountability of labor organizations to their members,” said Ms. Lipnic, who oversees the Employment Standards Administration. “Making sure there is not corruption and financial malfeasance in unions is what we’re responsible for.”
But some union officials said the administration was adopting these rules as retaliation after unions overwhelmingly endorsed Democrats in last month’s elections.
Jonathan Hiatt, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s general counsel, said that following the new regulations would cost the nation’s unions hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
“This is punitive and totally anti-union,” Mr. Hiatt said.
The A.F.L.-C.I.O. has worked with the Teamsters union and the carpenters union – the two unions closest to the administration – to urge it not to introduce the regulations.
“We’re talking about an administration that opposes regulations on air quality, water quality, on forests, on food safety, on repetitive stress injuries in the workplace,” Mr. Hiatt said. “But when it comes to increased regulations on unions, requiring them to itemize every expense, that doesn’t seem to trouble this administration at all.”
Ms. Lipnic denied that the regulations were being introduced for political reasons. Rather, she said, the Labor Department wanted to update the disclosure requirements, which have not been substantially changed since 1960, the year after the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959. That law was enacted in response to the 1950’s scandals involving the Teamsters and other unions.
Patrick J. Szymanski, the Teamsters’ general counsel, said his union had told its friends in the White House that it opposed these regulations as anti-union and would join the rest of labor in fighting them. He said it was unfair that the administration was imposing stricter reporting requirements on unions than on corporations or on many nonprofit organizations.
“We’ve always taken the position that the only reason this is happening is because organized labor is not necessarily a supporter of the administration,” Mr. Szymanski said.
Whatever the Department of Labor “would like you to believe, this is purely political,” he said.
Ms. Lipnic said the new rules would be published in the Federal Register, with a 60-day comment period for the public.
In a news release prepared for this Monday, the Labor Department said: “Enhanced disclosure will help union members better exercise their self-governance rights and detect financial mismanagement and misconduct by union officials. U.S. Labor Department investigations of union financial fraud result in an average of 11 criminal convictions a month, with a total of more than 640 convictions during the past five years.”
Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, a frequent critic of unions, praised the proposed regulations, saying that workers deserved to know how their union dues were spent.
“Updating and providing more meaningful disclosure to union members as to how their dues is spent is a no-brainer,” he said. “The 40-year-old disclosure forms didn’t provide any meaningful information.”