Department of Labor Rescinds Trump-era Union Financial Disclosure Rule

The rule can be found here.

Generally, it required unions with $250,000 or more in total annual receipts — which must therefore file a Form LM-2 Labor Organization Annual Report – to file a separate report (Form T-1) providing detailed financial information about trusts, such as apprenticeship and training plans, labor-management cooperation committees, strike funds, and building corporations, in which the unions have an interest. The reporting obligation kicked in when a union during the reporting period, either alone or in combination with other unions, (1) selects or appoints the majority of the members of the trust’s governing board, or (2) contributes more than 50% of the trust’s receipts.

Last week, the Department announced its final decision to rescind the rule. Explained the Department:

The Form T-1, promulgated by the last Administration, imposed unjustified paperwork burdens on labor organizations. This new recordkeeping and reporting requirements were redundant to existing filing requirements, such as IRS and Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) reporting, and, thus, unnecessary to preventing the circumvention or evasion of reporting requirements under the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA) or detecting or deterring wrongdoing. The rule ignored that the vast majority of union officers and employees do their work diligently and without incident, and that when civil and criminal violations do occur – and a union and its members are thereby victimized – [Office of Labor-Management Standards] already has an array of means to, and an established record of, bringing such wrongdoers to justice.

Also, according to the Department, union members will continue to receive detailed information about their union’s finances, including the identity and contact information of the union’s trusts, through the annual Form LM-2 report available in the Office of Labor-Management Standard Public Disclosure Room.