Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959

Content

Important provisions of the law were as follows:

• Unions had to hold secret elections, reviewable by the Department of Labor.
• Union members are protected against abuses by a bill of rights including guarantees of freedom of speech and periodic secret elections of officers.
• Members of the Communist Party and convicted felons were barred from holding union office. The bar on Communist Party members was ruled unconstitutional in 1965 in the case United States v. Brown.
• Unions had to submit annual financial reports to the DOL.
• Every union officer must act as a fiduciary in handling the assets and conducting the affairs of the union.
• Unions' power to put subordinate bodies in trusteeship, a temporary suspension of democratic processes within a union, was limited.
• Minimum standards were made before a union could expel or take other disciplinary action against a member of the union.

The LMRDA covers both workers and unions covered by the National Labor Relations Act ("Wagner Act") and workers and unions in the railroad and airline industries, who are covered by the Railway Labor Act. The LMRDA does not, as a general rule, cover public sector employees, who are not covered by either the NLRA or the RLA. The LMRDA likewise does not displace state laws governing unions' relations with their members except to the extent that those state laws would conflict with federal law.

Congress also amended the National Labor Relations Act, as part of the same piece of legislation that created the LMRDA, by tightening the Taft–Hartley Act's prohibitions against secondary boycotts and prohibiting certain types of "hot cargo" agreements, under which an employer agreed to cease doing business with other employers, and empowered the General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board to seek an injunction against a union that engages in recognitional picketing of an employer for more than thirty days without filing a petition for representation with the NLRB.

Union members may enforce their LMRDA rights through private lawsuit or, in some cases, through the US Department of Labor.

Subsequent operation

Twenty years after the passage of the Act, co-sponsor Senator Robert Griffin wrote,

Today, nearly two decades after enactment, it is undeniable that the Landrum–Griffin Act has played a significant role in enabling union members to participate more freely in the affairs of their unions. On the other hand, it cannot be said that union corruption and abuses of union power have disappeared. But such conduct in the union movement is not as common as it was twenty years ago; and, in large measure, that can be credited to the existence of the Landrum–Griffin Act.

Griffin acknowledged the shortcomings, particularly with regard to the Teamsters. However, Griffin argued that the violations were contrary to the Act, placing the blame instead on the Department of Labor for failing to pursue action against the Teamsters for its corruption.

Voting

The Act stressed for union members to be guaranteed, as part of a Bill of Rights, the right to a secret ballot on certain issues facing the union at large. However, in naming certain aspects of union function, such as dues, constitution, bylaws, membership, and not others, the Act opened the door for abuses. For instance, a vote on the union constitution would require that each member have the right to see the proposed changes, distribute information in support or opposition thereof, and have their union bound by the result of the election. However, if a ratification vote was not under one of these named clauses, the protections did not apply under the Act, and union officials could act as they saw fit, regardless of the sentiment of general membership.

Collective bargaining

Likewise, the Act addressed the issue of collective bargaining but only in externalities such as reporting thereof. It did not address the question of whether such agreements required any consent from the union members or locals. Furthermore, in allowing for trusteeship in such instances, the Act allowed for union officials to exert greater control over the will of their members. In one court case on the matter, an Oklahoma City local attempted to leave one union body to affiliate with another. The original union put it under trusteeship to block the transfer, and the court upheld the move as legal under the Act. As law professor Alan Hyde put it, "the courts advance democratic bargaining only when assured that such democracy will not disadvantage more fundamental policy interests, such as harmony between employers and 'unions' (read union elites) or control of inflation."

Pensions

With regard to retiree pensions, among other secondary issues, the Act did nothing to close the loophole created by the National Labor Relations Act to allow such 'permissive' or 'not mandatory' items from being dealt with by a union employer unilaterally, a right which was upheld by the Supreme Court as late as 1971 in Allied Chemical Workers Local 1 v. Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company. Likewise, in 1980, the Supreme Court affirmed the right of union international offices to negotiate a pension plan in conflict with that supported by the members when union bylaws allowed for approval by international.

Persuader Rule

President Barack Obama used the Act as authority to issue the "Persuader Rule", which required an employer's attorney to publicly disclose advice provided to persuade against unionization. The National Federation of Independent Business sued and, on November 16, 2016, U.S. District Judge Samuel Ray Cummings issued a permanent nationwide injunction blocking the Persuader Rule, finding it was not authorized by the Act, and that it violated the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.