In the never ending battle between unions and employers, big labor is set to score a victory.
The Obama Administration will unveil a new rule Wednesday that requires employers who hire outside lawyers and consultants to help fight unionization to disclose information about those relationships more frequently, according to a Labor Department press release.
“Today, employers commonly engage third-party consultants in crafting and delivering anti-union messages to workers. Workers often do not know when employers engage consultants behind the scenes to influence their decisions,” the statement reads. “To address this lack of transparency, a new rule from the U.S. Department of Labor will require reporting of employer-consultant, or “persuader” agreements – to complement the information that unions already report on their organizing expenditures, resulting in better information for workers making decisions on whether or not to form a union or bargain collectively.”
Business groups, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, oppose the regulation. “It is a shame that the [Labor Department] would expend its resources on a regulation that is so clearly one-sided and intended solely to benefit its big labor benefactors, rather than focusing on initiatives that would invigorate a still-underperforming economy,” Randy Johnson, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s senior vice president of labor, told the Wall Street Journal.