Feb. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Boston Red Sox All-Star Kevin Youkilis had to reveal his appearance fees, and actress Morgan Fairchild was forced to report corporate-paid trips.

They were among about 7,000 union officials covered by financial disclosure rules tightened by the Bush administration. Labor leaders say the requirements amount to harassment and want President Barack Obama to ease them.

Prospects are good. Three weeks into the Obama administration, organized labor has racked up a series of victories, highlighted by the so-called Lilly Ledbetter legislation, which makes it easier to fight pay discrimination. The president also has signed four presidential orders strengthening union rights with federal contractors.

After contributing more than $100 million to Obama and congressional Democrats for their 2008 election campaigns, unions appear determined to cash in their chips, and are laying plans to go after their top goal: legislation that would make it easier for workers to organize.

“Given the way organized labor put so much on the line for Obama during the election, they are clearly eager for some kind of payback,” said Bradford Livingston, a labor attorney at Seyfarth Shaw LLP in Chicago. “We are looking at some of the most fundamental changes to labor law in over 60 years.”

Before they tackle their top priority, labor leaders are working through a checklist of non-legislative actions they want from Obama. Among them are stricter enforcement of workplace safety regulations, more investigations of alleged wage abuses by employers and relaxation of the financial disclosure rules.

$25 Popcorn Popper

Those rules say all union officials must file documents revealing any personal financial dealings that might cause a conflict of interest. The Bush administration used the requirement as a tactic to “harass unions,” Marc Perrone, the secretary-treasurer of the Washington-based United Food and Commercial Workers, said in an interview.

Among items covered by the provisions were a $25 popcorn popper received by a Michigan Education Association official from an education services group, and a $379 fruit-of-the-month club subscription given by a law firm to a locomotive union head in Cleveland.

The rules also swept in Youkilis, who as his team’s representative to the Major League Baseball Players Association was required to report the $11,000 he got for signing baseballs at a Nordstrom Inc. store. His agent, Joe Bick, said the first baseman didn’t object to filing the forms.

Fighting Corruption

Fairchild, a member of the Screen Actors Guild board, filed forms showing that Walt Disney Co.’s ABC News paid her expenses to attend the annual White House Correspondent’s Association dinner in Washington in 2007. She didn’t respond to an e-mail or phone calls left with her spokesman, Steve Rodriguez.

The disclosure requirements, which were passed in the 1950s and not vigorously enforced, were corruption-fighting tools, said Don Todd, a Labor Department official who updated the rules during the Bush administration.

Todd said in a written statement that he was “confident” that the changes “will both discourage embezzlement of union members’ money and make such embezzlements harder to hide.”

Another rule proposed by the Bush administration would require volunteers, as well as union staff and officers, to make public personal information such as mortgage loans from financial institutions that do business with the union. Obama has halted the rule pending a review.

Unions are likely to win some easing of the disclosure requirements, said Charles Craver, who teaches labor law at George Washington University Law School in Washington. “Labor will still have to maintain certain financial reports, but it will wind up less burdensome,” he said.

Wage Abuses

Dolline Hatchett, a Labor Department spokeswoman, and White House spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to comment.

Another union goal is getting the department to expand its investigations of alleged wage abuses to the retail and transportation industries, said Mike Asensio, a labor lawyer at Baker Hostetler LLP in Columbus, Ohio.

The Labor Department probably will push for tougher enforcement of mine safety and other workplace rules, and pursue more litigation against employers accused of violating rules on the minimum wage, overtime pay, family and medical leave, and protections for temporary workers, said Charles Jellinek, a labor attorney at Bryan Cave in St. Louis.

Labor-Friendly Democrats

Unions also want Obama to put more labor-friendly Democrats on the five-member National Labor Relations Board, which determines whether employers violated laws on union organizing. Obama on Jan. 20 appointed former Teamsters union official Wilma Liebman to head the panel and is likely to appoint Democrats to two of three open seats, according to Livingston.

“Once that board gets up to five members, we are likely to see a reversal of policies in a direction that is less favorable to management than we saw under Bush,” Livingston said.

These efforts may be the prelude to organized labor’s push to pass the so-called Employee Free Choice Act. Republicans have vowed to block the measure, which would let workers form a union when a majority of them sign a card requesting one, rather than through a secret-ballot election.

While the president has said the U.S. should “level the playing field for workers and unions,” he also has signaled that the more contentious legislation on labor’s agenda may have to wait until he gets the economy back on track.

“If we’re losing half a million jobs a month, then there are no jobs to unionize,” Obama said last month in a Washington Post interview.

With 91 percent of union campaign contributions going to Democrats in the last two-year election cycle, labor is sensing that it’s payback time, said Bob Lian, a labor attorney with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP in Washington who represents companies.

“We’re all surmising that unions have been so influential in electing Obama” that they will get what they want, Lian said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Holly Rosenkrantz in Washington at hrosenkrantz@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: February 11, 2009 00:00 EST