Labor Unions, Employers and Bush

Does the Bush Administration distrust labor unions more than employers? Unions report their financial information directly to the Office of Labor Management Standards(OLMS), while employers keep their records on site, which means that the Wage and Hour Division has to visit each indivual employer in order to enforce the laws it administers. And yet, the regulatory budgets for the two divisions of the Department of Labor appear skewed

Ross Eisenbrey, vice-president of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) noted June 4 that President Bush's proposed FY 2009 budget for the Department of Labor

requested $58 million for Office of Labor Management Standards (OLMS), which oversees 23,000 unions and union locals with 13 million members. He requested only $193 million for the Wage and Hour Division, which oversees 7.4 million employers and protects 150 million employees by enforcing a host of labor standards, including child labor laws, overtime rules, and the Family and Medical Leave Act, among others. In terms of dollars per regulated entity, the OLMS budget is $2,500 per union and union local. The Wage and Hour Division budget is only $26.08 per employer.