Department of Labor Harming Unions

A new report details how political appointees in the Department of Labor (DOL) are targeting and sabotaging unions and their leaders. The Center for American Progress has issued a report on the DOL's "political misinformation campaign" against unions and the deliberate over-use of regulations such as reporting requirements to "overwhelm unions with paperwork and trick them into noncompliance," according to the Washington Post.

Ironically, the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) is rigorously and even perniciously enforcing detailed regulations--unlike in most other executive agencies, and even the rest of DOL, where enforcement of regulations to protect workers and others is often considered too lax.

OLMS is also planning to increase its conflict-of-interest report form from three pages to nine, and to classify as union "leaders" even shop stewards. This could require an additional 100,000 union members to file the form, according to AFL-CIO estimates.