Labor Organization Annual Financial Reports

This final rule delays the effective date and applicability date of regulations pertaining to the filing by labor organizations of annual financial reports required by the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, as amended (LMRDA) that were published in the Federal Register on January 21, 2009. They revised Labor Organization Annual Report Form LM-2 and established a procedure whereby the Department may revoke, when warranted, a labor organization's authorization to file the simplified Labor Organization Annual Report Form LM-3. These regulations were to have gone into effect on February 20, 2009, but were delayed until April 21, 2009, by a final rule published on February 20, 2009 (74 FR 7814). This final rule postpones the effective date of the regulations from April 21, 2009, until October 19, 2009, and the applicability date of the regulations from July 1, 2009, until January 1, 2010. This will allow additional time for the agency and the public to consider a proposal to withdraw the January 21 regulations and, meanwhile, to permit unions to delay costly development and implementation of any necessary new accounting and recordkeeping systems and procedures, pending this further consideration. At the same time, the Department has published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking elsewhere in this issue of the Federal Register, seeking public comment on its proposal to withdraw the regulations.