(The AFL-CIO issued the following on October 3.)
The Bush Administration’s announcement today that it will force overly-burdensome new financial reporting rules on unions is yet more evidence of the Administration’s blind determination to weaken workers’ organizations and is clearly political payback for workers’ overtime pay win yesterday in the House. The announcement is yet another Friday afternoon release of actions they hope to shield from scrutiny.
While unions support reasonable financial disclosure requirements for all types of organizations, the Bush Administration’s rules are craftily designed to weaken unions — the strongest advocates for American workers — as our nation prepares for the 2004 elections. The rules target unions and go far beyond what is required of corporations or other not-for-profit organizations.
After first issuing its proposed rules in December of 2002, the department received 35,000 comments, the overwhelming majority of which were against the rule, and heard from members of Congress from both parties that the rules were punitive and not helpful for accurate disclosure. Today’s rules include no substantive changes from their original proposal, despite the fact that 30 Republican House members, in addition to Democrats, urged the department to start over to make them more meaningful.
Bush’s reporting rules require unions to dump massive amounts of minute information into the Labor Department’s database at huge expense, yet they will not create a coherent picture of unions’ finances. The rules will burden over 5000 labor organizations – – only 70 of which are large, international unions – – with extensive new reporting requirements requiring filling out huge numbers of forms, thus leaving less time for contract negotiations, grievance handling, organizing and other core union activities. One union, the Airline Pilots Association, estimates that the reporting under the new rules would result in five and a half feet of paper each year. In addition, the Bush rules will reveal the details of workers’ organizations’ finances to employers, thus putting workers at a disadvantage at the bargaining table.
The Bush agenda is made even more evident by the fact that Newt Gingrich issued a memo in 1992 to then Secretary of Labor Lynn Martin calling for the same reporting changes for unions as those issued today.
America’s workers deserve better from their President than political back-room gaming at their expense. President Bush should recall the rules and go back to the drawing board to create financial reporting rules that work for working people.