Union members are entitled to see where their dues go, and so is everyone else. Under the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, most national and local unions must file detailed financial reports with the Department of Labor each year, and the public can read every one of them free online (DOL Office of Labor-Management Standards). The largest unions file the LM-2 form, a line-item ledger of receipts, salaries and disbursements.
What is the LM-2 and who must file one?
The LM-2 is the full-form annual financial report required of labor organizations with total annual receipts of 250,000 dollars or more (DOL OLMS reporting thresholds). Smaller unions file the shorter LM-3 or LM-4 forms on the same schedule. Reports are due within 90 days of the union's fiscal year end, and extensions are available. Filing is mandatory for private-sector unions covered by the Act; public-sector unions outside its coverage are not LM filers.
Where can members and the public read a filing?
OLMS publishes every filing in its Online Public Disclosure Room, searchable by union name, and the data can be downloaded in bulk (DOL OLMS). No registration or fee applies. A member does not need to ask the local for anything, though Title I of the LMRDA separately guarantees members the right to examine the documents that support the report.
What does the report actually contain?
The LM-2 opens with statement-level figures: receipts by source, disbursements by category, assets and liabilities. It then itemizes. Schedule 15 lists every officer and employee paid more than 10,000 dollars a year, with gross salary and expense reimbursements (DOL, LM-2 form instructions). Later schedules break out disbursements to separate funds, the union's own subsidiaries and political and charitable contributions above reporting thresholds.
How to find and read a filing in five steps
- Open the OLMS Online Public Disclosure Room and search the union's full legal name.
- Select the fiscal year, noting that unions set their own fiscal calendars.
- Read the receipt and disbursement summary first; it is the shape of the budget.
- Open Schedule 15 to see officer and employee compensation, including reimbursements.
- Compare years: changes in strike-fund balances, administration costs and affiliations show up between reports, not inside one.
What can members do if a report looks wrong?
Title I of the LMRDA gives members a bill of rights: equal voting, freedom of speech in union affairs and protection against improper discipline. Members who suspect false reporting or misuse of funds can complain to OLMS, which enforces the reporting act and can refer criminal matters to the Department of Justice (DOL OLMS). Members can also sue in federal court over violations of their Title I rights, after exhausting internal remedies where required.
How do LM-2 filings get used in disputes?
| Question in dispute | Where the LM-2 answers it |
|---|---|
| How much does the president earn, and on whose authority? | Schedule 15, with trustees' signatures on the report itself |
| Did strike benefits actually flow to strikers? | Disbursement schedules and strike-fund line items |
| How large is the union's war chest for organizing? | Assets, receipts by source and organizing disbursements |
| Is the local solvent or merged away? | Year-over-year reports and affiliation entries |
The filings are self-reported, audited only selectively by OLMS, and read best in series. A single year shows balances; several years show conduct.
Who signs the report, and under what standard?
The union's president and treasurer, or equivalent officers, sign the LM-2 under penalty of perjury, answering detailed questions about bonds, leases, loans and mergers on the form itself (DOL, LM-2 form). False reporting is a criminal matter, and OLMS refers cases to the Department of Justice when the record supports it. Signatures are why officers' names, not just numbers, matter when a report is challenged.
What do dues, fees and initiation charges look like in the report?
They are the first lines of the receipts section, usually the bulk of a local's income, but the form does not separate members' dues from fees paid by nonmembers. To see a fee arrangement, a reader needs the collective bargaining agreement, not the LM-2. The report shows what arrived; the contract shows who owed it and on what terms.
What does enforcement actually look like?
OLMS audits a subset of filings, publishes civil enforcement actions and refers criminal cases involving embezzlement or false reporting to prosecutors (DOL OLMS enforcement pages). Local US attorneys' offices regularly announce union embezzlement convictions, which usually begin as discrepancies in LM reporting. The system is complaint-driven and selective; it is not a routine audit of every local every year.
What are the limits of the document?
The LM-2 is self-reported, standardized and backward-looking. It aggregates hundreds of disbursement lines into categories that are broader than they sound, and per-capita taxes paid to an international union sit beside local strike costs under single headings unless schedules itemize them. Read the schedules, not the summary, and read at least three years. One report answers what the union owns; the series answers what the union does.
What about dues money that leaves the local?
The single most revealing line for most locals is per-capita tax or payments to affiliates, the share of every dues dollar forwarded to the international union and to state or national bodies. A local collecting 500,000 dollars a year may forward most of it upward, keeping a thin operating budget at home. Disbursements to affiliates, strike funds and defense funds are each scheduled separately, and comparing them across years shows where the money moved during a dispute.
Members sometimes discover from this line why their local's own campaigns feel underfunded, and internationals sometimes discover why a local's solvency depends on them. Neither conclusion follows from one year; both often follow from three.
Two practical habits close the reading. First, pull the union's constitution and bylaws alongside the report, because the LM-2 shows what was spent while the bylaws show what spending was authorized, and the distance between the two is where member disputes usually begin. Second, note the fiscal year end before comparing locals, since a December-year local and a September-year local can describe the same events in different reports.
Related: Can public employees be required to pay union fees? · Can workers strike over safety? The two statutes that answer.
For more context, read 9.9 percent: what the union membership numbers hide.
For more context, read Can public employees be required to pay union fees?.
For more context, read Can workers strike over safety? The two statutes that answer.