Proving that it’s never too late to do the right thing, Congressional Republicans are proposing to impose monetary penalties against unions for violations of the “Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act” of 1959:
“The LMRDA requires labor organizations to file annual financial disclosure reports. Union officers and union employees also must file reports in certain circumstances that could involve a conflict of interest… Currently, to enforce compliance with the LMRDA, a union member must sue his union to obtain information, and the labor secretary must seek an injunction ordering compliance if a union fails to file a mandatory report.”
Under the new legislation, proposed by Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas), federal district courts could fine a union $250 a day for failure to provide its members with the financial disclosures which provide the basis for its annual reports, and also allows the Department of Labor Secretary to fine a union $250 a day – and up to a maximum of $10,000 – for missing disclosure deadlines under the LMRDA.
Both union members and the general public have every right to expect that the financial records of unions be reported on time and in full in accordance with law that is nearly forty years old. Should the public have to wait another forty years for union officials to start doing the right thing?
In the least, the American people can be assured that Republicans in Congress are no longer waiting to do the right thing in demanding real penalties for failure by union officers to abide by the law of the land.
ALG Perspective: While the LMRDA of 2008 is a welcome move by House and Senate Republicans, but they should have acted when they still had a majority in both houses of Congress. While it is better to be late than to never show up, it is ultimately better to never be late.
