November 21, 2005

Chao explains new rule enforcement

The Department of Labor has worked for the past several years to reform decades-old labor laws and increase union transparency, Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao told The Heritage Foundation’s President’s Club last Tuesday.

Chao highlighted in particular her office’s efforts to improve labor unions’ accountability to their members. For example, DOL now requires unions to report all expenses over $5,000—a far cry from the days when tens of millions of dollars were classified merely as “miscellaneous” or “sundry expenses.” Similarly, DOL is now enforcing a 40-year-old rule mandating that employees file conflict of interest forms. The department has received more conflict of interest forms since the crackdown began a year ago than in the previous 40 years combined.

To make this information accessible to union members, DOL has posted all these reports and more to a special website: union-reports.dol.gov.

Relevant Heritage research

• Mark Tapscott, "Transparency: Bad News for Big Labor?" July 27, 2005
• Paul Rosenzweig, “Union Reporting and Disclosure: Legislative Reform Proposals,” June 26, 2002