Pointing, on the floor of the U.S. Senate, to a stack of union corruption reports compiled by NLPC, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) argued on July 10 that legislation on corporate accountability should also include unions.
McConnell spoke in support of his amendment to the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act, which would require unions with an annual income over $200,000 to use the same strict standards for their annual financial reports filed with the U.S. Dept. of Labor (DOL) as public corporations, and that they submit their reports to audits by a certified public accountants.
Pointing to the “stack” of NLPC’s union corruption reports just for 2002, McConnell recounted 17 of those crimes, then revealed that the DOL’s Office of Labor-Management Standards reported an average of 12 indictments and 11 convictions of union fraud per month over the last four years. “We have a choice,” McConnell concluded: “We can extend to American workers the same financial protection afforded corporate shareholders [since 1933], or we can extend to unions the ability to continue to pilfer and profit off the workers’ money. That is the choice.”
The Senate voted, 55-43, to table McConnell’s amendment without voting on it.