John Sarbanes: “it is important, in considering this amendment, to realize there exists now, under the labor management reporting and…”

“it is important, in considering this amendment, to realize there exists now, under the labor management reporting and disclosure procedure, extensive and intensive provisions for reporting by labor organizations, officers, and employees of labor organizations. If all of these provisions are not being carried out fully, the responsibility rests with the Secretary of Labor. The Secretary of Labor ought to be doing her job. If the Congress is not providing sufficient resources for that, that is an issue for the Congress. We ought to address that issue. This supposed parallelism that is being argued completely misses the mark in the sense that there is already an existing statutory scheme covering reporting and disclosure by labor organizations. I want to go through some of those provisions so Members appreciate how extensive they are and the amount of review and oversight that now exists. I am now reading from the statute: Every labor organization shall file annually with the secretary a financial report signed by its president and treasurer-- So much for this argument about they ought to sign, put their signature on the report-- or corresponding principal officers containing the following information in such detail as may be necessary accurately to disclose its financial condition and operations for its preceding fiscal year.”