US Department of Labor announces rescission of Final Rule on Form T-1 Trust Annual Report filing

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Labor today announced the rescission of the Final Rule on “Labor Organization Annual Financial Report for Trusts in which a Labor Organization is Interested, Form T-1.”

On March 29, 2021, the department announced that it would propose to rescind the Form T-1 rule and advised that its Office of Labor-Management Standards would not enforce the final rule until one year after the date a labor organization’s first Form T-1 was due. After reviewing comments received on its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the department found the Form T-1 would not provide additional information necessary for OLMS to track labor organization fraud.

“After an extensive review, the Office of Labor-Management Standards found that enforcing the filing of the Form T-1 may actually deprive the department of resources needed to enforce the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act,” said Office of Labor-Management Standards Director Jeffrey Freund. “Information the Form T-1 would provide is already largely available through our partner agencies, such as the Employee Benefits Security Administration and the IRS, and detailed information on union finances is available to union members and the public through the OLMS Public Disclosure Room. The rescission of this rule will allow OLMS to devote more resources to holding employers and union officials responsible when they violate the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act.”

The department  published a final rule establishing the Form T-1 on March 6, 2020. It required labor unions with $250,000 or greater in total annual receipts and which file the Form LM-2 annual union financial disclosure report to file this separate report covering the finances of certain trusts in which they are interested, such as apprenticeship and training plans, labor-management cooperation committees, strike funds, and building corporations.