The U.S. Department of Labor today announced a final rule that increases financial transparency for unions regulated by the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 and enhances union worker protections.
Issued by the department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards, the final rule modernizes the reporting requirements of the Form LM-2, an annual financial disclosure form which larger labor organizations use to report their financial conditions and operations under the act. The final rule also creates an enhanced Form LM-2 Long Form for the nation’s largest labor organizations and increases filing thresholds for Forms LM-2, LM-3, and LM-4 to alleviate burden on smaller labor organizations.
The final rule increases transparency for America’s hardworking union members by making practical reporting adjustments to reflect the growth and expansion of labor organizations’ financial operations since the passage of the LMRDA. The Office of Labor-Management Standards last substantially revised the Form LM-2 in 2003 and has not updated reporting thresholds for Forms LM-3 and LM-4 since 1992.
“Modern unions are financially complex organizations,” said Office of Labor-Management Standards Director Elisabeth Messenger. “The final rule fine tunes reporting requirements for larger labor organizations – many of which report tens of millions of dollars in assets each year – and adjusts thresholds for smaller labor organizations to increase transparency for America’s hardworking union members and ensure reporting requirements keep pace as labor organizations evolve.”
Additionally, the rule allows union members to stay better informed of their union’s financial conditions and operations by making it easier to see how their union dues are spent. Increasing union financial transparency better enables members to meaningfully and effectively participate in the democratic governance of their union. The reforms also serve as a deterrent to fraud and embezzlement, and aid in their detection.
The Office of Labor-Management Standards administers and enforces provisions of the LMRDA, which promotes union democracy and financial integrity in private sector labor unions, transparency for labor unions and their officials, as well as transparency for employers and labor relations consultants.
Read the final rule on Form LM-2, Labor Organization Annual Financial Reports.