Labor Updates (12/13/07)

Exposing the Bush Anti-Labor Department: In a recent report from the Center for American Progress, Scott Lilly exposes the politicization of the Labor Department by the Bush Administration. "Beyond Justice: Bush Administration's Labor Department Abuses Labor Union Regulatory Authorities" is an investigative report showing that "The Bush administration has shoveled significantly more federal tax dollars into the department's Office of Labor-Management Services so that key political operatives in OLMS could expand and exercise regulatory authority to impose costly and confusing new reporting requirements, attempt to increase the number of criminal prosecutions, disclose the results to the public in seriously misleading ways and mischaracterize the published data through a variety of false analyses.” Lilly adds that “the underlying purpose, of course, is to undermine the reputation of the labor union movement through a classic political misinformation campaign-all under the supervision of a lifelong partisan political operative whose career has been dedicated to the destruction of his political opponents. "