Will labor nominee enforce laws governing unions?
Lest people be left wondering where the new DOL stood, the bureaucrats charged with ensuring that America’s unions are fair and honest also axed the regulations requiring union officials to disclose potential conflicts of interest. It’s no surprise why the updated LM-30 perished so quickly: The AFL-CIO had previously tried to stop the regulation’s implementation via a lawsuit.
Perez’s predecessor, Hilda Solis, was keen to note that both the LM-2 and the LM-30 regulations remained in place, albeit in their weakened forms. Her spokeswoman defended the department’s actions by declaring that they represented a “fair and balanced enforcement of labor-management reporting laws.”Continue Reading
This is the legacy that Perez stands to inherit. It remains to be seen whether he approves of it or intends to bring reform to a bureaucracy that’s too friendly with the organizations it oversees.
Unfortunately, the senators hoping to get answers to these questions may need to look elsewhere. Perez will most likely be confirmed by the Senate’s Democratic majority, regardless of what questions he’s asked.
But that doesn’t mean that labor reform is out of the Senate’s hands. The Department of Labor’s fickleness is a byproduct of the leeway given to it by federal laws. Standardizing this all-too-political landscape requires something like the Employee Rights Act, which would proactively align union officials’ actions with the interests of their members through a series of reforms including guaranteed periodic union recertification and paycheck protection. Reforms like these would lessen the need for the department to demand additional reporting from union officials, as union members will finally be able to address those issues themselves.
Should Congress decide to take this path, then Perez and his eventual successors won’t have much say in whether they want to unduly favor unions — the law of the land will trump the whims of an administration.
Richard Berman is executive director of the Center for Union Facts.