Union Watch-Dog Agency Tightens Leash with LM-30
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Brian M Johnson
10 OCTOBER 2007
202-785-0266
Watch Dog Helps Unions Go Legit
AWF Supports New Union Financial Reporting Form, LM-30
Washington, D.C. — Yesterday, the union monitoring agency the Office of Labor Management Standards (OLMS), offered a training seminar on how to file the new union financial disclosure form, the LM-30. Required under the 1959 Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure (LMRDA), unions must disclose certain financial transactions and make public various financial interests including those of spouses and minor children.
The purpose of disclosure, according to the Department of Labor is “to publicly identify an actual or potential conflict between the personal financial interests of a union office or employee…and his or her obligations to the union and its members.”
“The issue here is transparency,” says AWF policy director Brian M Johnson. “The reason all OLMS financial reporting forms exist is to ensure that union bosses are held accountable for their financial activity. Members’ dues should be used to provide services for the members – not for other purposes prohibited by law.”
Since 2001, the OLMS has convicted over 780 union members and officials on charges of financial corruption and restored over $110 million in dues that were misused. However, funding legislation that passed out of the House has cut over $2 million from the OLMS budget and falls $11 million short of the President’s budget requests.
“At a time when union membership is at an all time low and OLMS convictions at a record high, union bosses are tightening their grip on members and doing all they can to secure their constant stream of funding – union dues.”
Johnson adds, “While OLMS should be commended for introducing the LM-30, the forms still fail to cover trust reporting like the Form T-1, ruled against in AFL-CIO vs. Chao, would have. As evident by the recent $35 billion ‘free money give-a-way’ from GM to the UAW, these massive trusts must be accounted for to protect the pensions of union members and hold union bosses accountable.”
