Appointing Elisabeth Messenger as head of union oversight agency OLMS
On February 24, President Trump appointed Elisabeth Messenger to serve as the head of the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) at the U.S. Department of Labor. Messenger is the former CEO of “Americans for Fair Treatment,” an organization opposed to public sector unions, and has spoken publicly against union membership and union dues. The position of OLMS head is not subject to Senate confirmation, so Ms. Messenger is now serving in the rule.
OLMS is a small sub-agency of the Department of Labor, with just over 200 employees enforcing the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA). The LMRDA regulations include “persuader” reporting, which requires employers to report their use of union-busting labor management consultants; reporting from unions on their finances; ensuring fair union elections; certifying compliance with labor standards as a condition of federal transit funding, and more. However, since its inception, OLMS has overwhelmingly prioritized enforcing the LMRDA’s requirements on unions to report their activities, while failing to apply the same level of scrutiny to employers. Project 2025, the right-wing policy playbook strongly informing the Trump administration’s policy agenda and personnel, recommended beefing up OLMS’s scrutiny of union activities, rather than of employers. An openly anti-union head of OLMS is a step in that direction.
EPI has estimated that employers spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on union-busting legal and consulting services – and this is likely a conservative estimate, since there are many activities that employers are not required to report to OLMS and there’s limited transparent data on this field. “Persuader” activities – both legal and illegal union-busting – are a significant reason why workers who want to form unions face so many barriers to organizing a union in their workplace.
https://www.epi.org/policywatch/appointing-elisabeth-messenger-as-head-of-union-oversight-agency-olms/