Not only did the fund industry lose its recent battle against the SEC in proxy disclosure fight, it appears that the war is still ongoing. Now the AFL-CIO is asking funds to hurry up and report on their proxy votes up to a year before they are mandated to, according to a Dow Jones Newswire report.

The AFL-CIO has been one of the most vocal proponents of the disclosures prompting fears inside the fund industry that the union will use the information in its struggles with management.

It seems that the union can't wait a year to get its hands on the info. Under the rules created by the SEC earlier this year, fund firms do not have to report their proxy votes until after next years' proxy vote season. That season ends a year from now, meaning that the union would have to cool its just until nearly 2005 to make use of the data.

Rather than wait, Richard Trumka, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, penned a letter to fund firms asking them for the data early. Whether or not the fund firms will provide the data early is up to them. So far, there are no reports that any are.

Trumka wrote that the just-passed proxy season "represented key tests of the fund industry's commitment to meaningful governance reform" which are "too important to go undisclosed to mutual fund shareholders," according to the news service.  

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