A new web memo from the Heritage Foundation charts the Department of Labor’s march in reverse on transparency requirements for labor unions. From “Decreasing Union Transparency: A Step Backward for Workers“:

President Obama campaigned on a platform of transparency and opposing special interest lobbyists. However, his DOL has violated both of those principles by revoking the improvements in union financial transparency that Secretary Chao implemented.

Union members deserve to know how their dues are spent. It protects them from corruption and allows them to hold their union accountable for bad decisions, such as the SEIU’s close relationship with the now-disgraced ACORN. Congress should act to protect workers if the President will not.

See also Mark Hemingway at The Washington Exmainer, citing how the reporting requirements gave members of Denver United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 enough information to inspire them to vote out their longstanding president, Ernie Duran, for nepotism and overspending.

Lead story in today’s Washington Times, “Obama team reverses union transparency“:

The Obama administration, which has boasted about its efforts to make government more transparent, is rolling back rules requiring labor unions and their leaders to report information about their finances and compensation.

The Labor Department noted in a recent disclosure that “it would not be a good use of resources” to bring enforcement actions against union officials who do not comply with conflict of interest reporting rules passed in 2007. Instead, union officials will now be allowed to file older, less detailed conflict reports.

The regulation, known as the LM-30 rule, was at the heart of a lawsuit that the AFL-CIO filed against the department last year.

Indeed, the list of policy recommendations the AFL-CIO made to the Obama transition team included its goal of rolling back LM-30 disclosures as one of its highest priorities for the new Administration. See “AFL-CIO 2008 Transition Project Recommendations for the Obama Administration“:

Highest
The Department should immediately stay all financial reporting regulations that have not
yet gone into effect or that have gone into effect but for which the first reporting deadline
has not yet occurred. This includes:
T-1;
revised LM-30 (effective 2008; first report due March 2009);
revised LM-2 (anticipated effective date December 2008; first report due until
March 2010);
LM-3 revocation procedures (anticipated effective date December 2008; first
report due until March 2010).
The stay should occur through an interim rule. Shortly thereafter, the Department should
issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking seeking comment on whether to rescind all of
these regulations, with a view toward recission.

The Times notes that one of the AFL-CIO attorneys in the LM-30 litigation, Deborah Greenfield, is now a high-ranking deputy at Labor and was an Obama transition team member. As we noted in December in this post, the Wall Street Journal reported that Greenfield’s first stop at DOL for the transition team was to the Office of Labor Management Standards.

Labor has already put the kibosh on an expanded LM-2 report, as well, delaying until October a proposal to beef up the disclosure requirements in annual reports unions must file. (To which Associated Builders and Contractors objected strenuously.)

Human Events gives us a list, “Top 10 Things On Big Labor’s Agenda ”

1. Employee Free Choice Act
In addition to the notorious “card-check” provision that strips union members of their right to a secret ballot, this bill also provides for increased penalties for employers who commit allegedly unfair labor practices. These increased penalties include treble damages and civil penalties of up to $20,000.

2. Repeal of Section 14(b) of Taft-Hartley
Repeal of this section 14 of the Taft-Hartley Act would take from states the right to enact right-to-work laws.

3. Family Medical Leave Act expansion
Bills sponsored by Sen. Chris Dodd (D.-Conn.) in the last Congress proposed creation of an insurance system to provide for paid family medical leave and an expansion of the employers covered by the act.

4. Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
This proposal is a response to the Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. decision, in which the Supreme Court said that the 180-day statute of limitations for equal pay lawsuits begins on the date the pay was agreed to. The Lilly Ledbetter Act would re-start the statute of limitations each time that a paycheck was received.

5. Minimum Wage Hike
Barack Obama’s website promises to “raise the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour by 2011.”

6. Patriot Employer Act
This bill imposes tax increases on companies that have major operations outside the U.S. and tax hikes on those don’t agree to “labor neutrality,” card check, etc.

7. Government unions
Barack Obama promised during the campaign that he would fight for collective bargaining rights for Transportation Security Administration workers. Big Labor will also seek the forced unionization of police, firefighters, and EMTs by federal fiat — overturning the laws of more than two dozen states.

8. Union Financial Disclosure
Drastically revise the Office of Labor-Management Standards’ Form LM-2 that has embarrassed and caused legal problems for union bosses by forcing them to reveal their salaries and spending.

9. National Labor Relations Board
Ram through a pro-union-appointee to the NLRB and add more labor advocates to the board. Right now, of the five seats, three are vacant.

10. Overturn Bush orders
Immediate revocation of Bush executive order on Beck rights notices and Bush executive order prohibitions on use of discriminatory union-only Project Labor Agreements in federal contracting.

And don’t forget: Expand Davis-Bacon wage mandates.

(Hat tip: Jim Gray)