Union Financial Disclosure

Financial Disclosure Fights Union Corruption

May 12, 2008

In 1958, Congress held an extensive series of hearings into labor union corruption. The result of these hearings was enactment of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 (LMRDA), also known as the Landrum-Griffin Act.

The LMRDA included provisions requiring labor unions to file annual financial reports with the U.S. Department of Labor as a deterrent to union corruption.

The information on the forms initially used by the Department of Labor was, for all practical purposes, worthless and the forms were relatively inaccessible.

Under the leadership of Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao the Office of Labor-Management Standards, the office charged with enforcing the LMRDA, has taken several steps to improve the quality of the information and to make it more accessible.

OLMS began posting images of the LM-2 forms on the Internet. As the information became more available its limited value became more obvious.

In 2002, in order to provide more meaningful information, the OLMS proposed revisions to Form LM-2. These reforms were opposed at every step of the way by union officials who didn't want to expose their financial dealings to the scrutiny of their members.

The new Form LM-2 and accompanying regulations were made final in 2003. In 2005, unions began submitting the new forms electronically so that they could be easily accessed on the Internet.

The OLMS web site at http://www.unionreports.gov provides a variety of ways for those who are interested to search this information. Financial reports for local, intermediate and international unions can be viewed online. In addition, it is possible to search the entire data base for "payer" and "payee" for those transactions that are itemized. It is also possible to search the data base by the name of a union officer or employee to discover the amount the union is paying in salaries, allowances and expenses. This function can be used to discover whether a union official is receiving multiple salaries and expenses from different union bodies.