John Lund – Obama Administration Personnel Alert

John Lund [http://www.nrtwc.org]

The recent events in Wisconsin have brought home the reality of how much power union bosses have over our government and as an extension our universities and schools — empty class rooms, school districts shutdown, and students encouraged by their teachers and professors to protest. How does this happen?

Well, Wisconsin is home to the oldest state funded “School for Workers,” which is operated by the University of Wisconsin-Extension. “Each year it offers hundreds of programs” designed specifically for union officials and union organizers. Organizers like those that ginned up the chaos in the streets of Madison.

How active has the Wisconsin School for Workers been in the Madison Mayhem is hard to say. But, it advertises training in “activism” — the left’s code word for mass “intimidation” like the kind in Madison. The School for Workers produced publicly-financed Labor Radio programs opposing Governor Walker and his reforms.

But perhaps the most interesting contribution of the Wisconsin School for Workers is as a source for President Barack Obama’s overseer of union corruption investigations and union financial disclosures. His name is John Lund and he heads the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Labor-Management Standards.

Lund, a professor at the School for Workers and a Big Labor-friendly expert hired by labor union officials, has taken a 2-year sabbatical from his Wisconsin position to oversee his former clients.

Since his arrival at the U.S. Department of Labor, Lund has been very busy repaying favors to union bosses.

Within days of his appointments, Lund, who chose to ignore President Obama’s Executive Order on Ethics, rolled back union financial disclosure and union official conflict-of-interest transparency to the benefit of his former clients.
Lund eliminated basic financial reporting requirements for teacher unions like the Wisconsin Education Association Council, and other state employee unions technically referred to as “intermediated bodies.”

In Addition, Lund is currently preparing to announce new conflict-of-interest reports that will exempt thousands of union officials from reporting no-show job payments.

Under the current Department of Labor union officer and employee conflict-of-interest disclosure rules, known as LM-30 reporting requirements, union officials are required to report their employer-paid union time in excess of 250 hours (approximately 3-months). In many cases, union officials’ entire year’s salaries are paid by the employer.

Union time is the time a union official spends working on union activities and not working for the employer. Generally speaking, employer payments to union officials are prohibited except for payments that cannot be differentiated from the types of payments made to any other employee. But, Lund intends to allow employer subsidization of union activity exempt from disclosure.

Lund has eliminated labor union reports regarding organizations and businesses, such as banks and credit unions, which they control.

The AFL-CIO is no longer required to disclose its financial influence over one such organization American Rights At Work where Lund’s boss, U.S. Labor Secretary Solis has an interest. Secretary Solis used to be the Treasurer and a board member of the AFL-CIO controlled American Rights At Work.
Other parts of Lund’s broad rescissions eliminate disclosure of insider distributions of union assets to union officers and employees.

Lund has blocked disclosure of often lucrative union officer and employee benefits such as cars, and tax-deferred accounts; former AFL-CIO President John Sweeney received about $1 million in one year from one such tax-deferred plan.

Additional Lund rescissions allow Big Labor to conceal the sources and amounts of funds received by union officials on behalf of the union. This revenue concealment creates a loophole that makes labor unions attractive to organized crime and embezzlers alike. If the amount of revenue that unions actually receive is not disclosed, then it makes it easier to take the money before it is entered into the books or to launder “dirty” sources of money.

Through all of this Lund has, if not in fact, in principle, violated President Obama’s Ethics executive Order that “closes the revolving door that allows government officials to move to and from private sector jobs in ways that give that sector undue influence over government.”