Office of Labor-Management Standards February 2010 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Office of Labor-Management Standards proposes to amend its regulations which require labor organizations to file the Form T-1, Trust Annual Report, about certain trusts in which they are interested pursuant to the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 (LMRDA). The Department of Labor (Department) proposes to amend these regulations because it believes that the trust reporting required under the rule is overly broad and is not necessary to prevent the circumvention and evasion of the Title II reporting requirements. Moreover, the Department views separate trust reporting requirements as unnecessary, in part because the Department also proposes to return ``subsidiary organization'' reporting to the Form LM-2 reporting requirements, which it believes is necessary to satisfy the purposes of the LMRDA. Finally, in interpreting the definition of ``labor organization'' under the LMRDA, the Department proposes to return to its long held view that the statute's coverage does not encompass intermediate bodies that are wholly composed of public sector organizations. In so doing, the Department has reconsidered a definitional interpretation that it adopted in 2003, which the Department now considers to have been insufficiently supported during the rulemaking process. The Department seeks comment on each of these proposals.