Major Victory for Labor Reform
Posted on August 2, 2006 at 3:01 pm by Chuck Muth
State affiliates of the National Education Association were moved another step closer to compliance with federal laws designed to prevent corruption in labor unions as a result of ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals issued today.
At issue is the federal Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, passed in 1959 specifically to “eliminate or prevent improper practices on the part of labor” unions. Since 1963 the Department of Labor considered unions solely representing government employees to be exempt from the law’s provisions, which include financial reporting and disclosure, guidelines for conducting fair elections, and other rules.
In an effort to modernize and update enforcement of the Act, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao and her Department in December 2002 began work to revise the rules by which the LMRDA is enforced. The revision included a re- examination of the Department’s 1963 finding that state affiliates of public employee unions were exempt.
Through its careful reading of the law, the Department found that indeed state and local affiliates of national labor organizations, even if the members of those affiliates consists solely of public workers, can be subject to the federal law.
The Department’s finding was a major victory for labor reformers and those combating union corruption.
Predictably, the state affiliates of the NEA filed suit to escape compliance with the federal law. (It seems the usual champions of more power in Washington suddenly rediscovered the virtues of federalism, at least when it applied to them.) A lower court ruled for the unions, while today’s decision reversed that decision and found in favor of Secretary Chao and her Department.
While the Court of Appeals reversed the lower court’s decision preventing enforcement of the act as it applies to the state affiliates, it remanded the matter back to the Labor Department to provide a more detailed explanation of how it arrived at its decision to reverse its earlier interpretation.
In short, the ruling provides a major victory for the forces of reform, and a minor victory for the unions seeking to avoid compliance while the Department complies with the court’s order to better explain how it arrived at its decision.
Congress passed the LMRDA specifically to combat corruption in organized labor. Secretary Chao and her team and are working hard to ensure that the law’s anti-corruption provisions protect as many workers as possible, while organized labor continues to fight any expansion of the applicability of laws and rules in the areas of financial disclosure, transparency, and fair elections.
SOURCE: Ron Nehring, Alliance for Worker Freedom, 8/1/06
