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For over thirty years, one of the most overt forms of employer opposition to unionization has been anti-union campaigns conducted by union avoidance consultants. As a result, both union and employer associations have attempted to influence the provisions of the LMRDA that cover consultant activities. This article provides the first comprehensive historical analysis of the LMRDA's reporting and disclosure requirements covering employers and consultants. The first section examines consultant reporting policy from the late 1950s to the late 1970s, a period when unions filed relatively few complaints and the DOL initiated few investigations, but the consultant industry expanded significantly. Section two examines developments in the 1980s – the period of greatest congressional and judicial activity on consultant reporting since the 1950s. The final section looks at post-1980s events and examines why organized labor has persisted with its campaign to reform government policy on consultant reporting, despite its inability to make progress on the issue over the past four decades.

Over the past few decades, the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) has become one of the most controversial and politicized divisions of the Department of Labor. Republic and Democratic Administrations have adopted starkly different practices concerning both the allocation of resources and the focus of regulatory activities at the division. These differences have been brought into sharp focus during the Bush II and Obama Administrations. Under the Bush Administration, funding for OLMS increased significantly, and the DOL revised union financial reporting requirements, imposing a more onerous burden on unions in the name of promoting transparency and accountability. Section 1 of this paper provides a summary and analysis of the most significant changes and innovations at the OLMS under the Obama Administration. Section 2 of the paper provides a detailed summary of the Bush era reforms and their fate under the Obama OLMS, and an analysis of the impact of these reforms in the area of increasing union transparency and accountability. It argues that the Bush reforms did little or nothing to achieve greater accountability and may instead have been motivated largely by a desire to impose a more onerous administrative burden on reporting unions.

This paper aims to examine the impact of the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA). It is expected that returns would have increased in response to the law’s passage, as it imposed a number of restrictions on unions vis-à-vis management and instituted many rules regulating unions’ internal affairs.

This paper uses event study methodology, which examines the impact of the law’s passage on the shareholder returns to the firms likely to have been affected by the law. Three different samples are used. Shareholder returns are examined on critical dates associated with the passage of the law to assess whether it benefited the firms in the samples.

Shareholder returns to firms expected to have been affected by the LMRDA fell in comparison to their competitors’ returns, indicating that the law was viewed by investors as being beneficial for firms. Presumably, the restrictions the law placed on unions were judged to be more important by investors than the improvement in unions’ image that might have resulted from the law, indicating that the law benefitted firms.

This is the first paper that has examined the impact of the LMRDA empirically to assess its impact on firms.

This paper aims to focus on corporate social responsibility and workplace well-being by examining Indonesian Stock Exchange (IDX)-listed companies’ labour disclosures.

Year-ending 2007 and 2010 annual report disclosures of 31 IDX-listed companies are analysed. The widely acknowledged Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines are used as the disclosure index checklist.

The results reveal that the overall labour disclosure level increases from 21.84 per cent in 2007 to 30.52 per cent in 2010. The levels of four of the five specific labour disclosures also increase with employment being the exception. The results further show that the Indonesian Government does not influence the increase in the levels of the overall labour disclosure or the four categories showing increased disclosure but, surprisingly, does significantly affect the decrease in the level of the employment category.

It is implied that the government is at best ambiguous given that, on one side, the government regulates all corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and reporting but appears to coercively pressure companies to hide employment-specific issues.

It is implied that Indonesian companies need to have “strong and influential” independent commissioners on the boards to counter any possible pressures from the government resulting in lower disclosure levels.

This paper provides insights into the “journey” of labour-related CSR disclosure practices in Indonesia and contributes to the literature by testing one specific variant of isomorphic institutional theory, namely, coercive isomorphism.

The primary objective of this article is to assist organisational management to evaluate policies on disclosure of information to trade unions. Such policies form part of the industrial relations system of an organisation, which embraces all aspects of personnel and labour management. I shall be drawing particular attention below to the need to consider the dynamic and interactive effects of information on the components of this system. Before looking directly at issues relating specifically to trade union negotiators, therefore, I want briefly to consider some aspects of communication of information to employees in general since there is clearly a potential interaction with the information supply to union negotiators.

Most of the corporate social reporting (CSR) studies conducted so far have been in the context of developed countries. Very few studies are available on the CSR practices in developing countries. Given the different socio‐economic context of developing countries it is argued that it is important to learn about the CSR practices in those countries. This study reports the results of a survey of CSR practices in Bangladesh. The main contribution of this paper is that in addition to measuring the extent and volume of disclosures by using content analysis, it explores the socio‐political and economic context in which these disclosures take place.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of how the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (“ERISA”) of 1974, as amended , applies to securities professionals such as registered investment advisers, registered broker‐dealers and individual registered representatives and financial planners who advise, manage, or trade for investment portfolios of private employee benefit plans and individual retirement accounts.

The paper is designed as a primer to familiarize securities professionals with the terminology, scope and subject‐matter of ERISA as it applies to benefit plan investment transactions. When appropriate, the regulatory framework of ERISA is compared and contrasted with the more familiar securities law regulatory scheme.

The various Federal laws loosely known as “ERISA” significantly impact securities professionals in connection with the marketing of financial products and services to employee benefit plans, including IRAs, and it is critical that securities professionals have a general overview of how they do so.

The research set out is only a broad summary, and covers an area of law that is rapidly developing. It should not be considered a definitive summary of the law but a starting‐point for further, in‐depth inquiry.

Any financial professional seeking to develop or market financial products and services to benefit plans can use the paper to become familiar with the framework and terminology of ERISA.

This is a reprint of a paper first published in 2004, with extensive revisions to reflect sweeping changes in the law and new developments in the financial marketplace, plus an overview of “hot topics”.

The study aims to examine the impact of corporate governance in terms of certain board characteristics on the level of universities’ voluntary sustainability disclosure.

A content analysis based on a comprehensive disclosure index – that also accounts for the impact that COVID-19 exerted on the social dimension of university activities – is performed on a sample of Italian public universities’ websites for the year 2020. An ordinary least squares regression model is estimated to test the association between universities’ board characteristics, namely, board size, board independence and board gender diversity (including the presence of a female rector), and online sustainability disclosure.

This study provides evidence that websites represent a valid tool used by universities to highlight their social performance and demonstrate their commitment to dealing with the pandemic’s social and economic disruption by supporting their stakeholders. Board gender diversity and female Rector’s presence are crucial factors that positively impact voluntary sustainability disclosure levels.

Policymakers and regulators can benefit from the study’s findings. Using the results of this study, they may reflect on the need to regulate sustainability reporting in universities. In addition, findings may offer policymakers inspiration for regulating the presence of women on university boards.

This study offers novel contributions to existing literature analysing the university’s voluntary sustainability disclosure practices through alternative communication tools such as websites. Moreover, it provides novel insight into the role of the board gender diversity in university sustainability disclosure practices.

The purpose of this study is to explore explanation factors regarding labor communication practices by many of the world's large companies.

The data collection focuses on the 2009 fiscal year sourced from 460 highly visible public companies in 57 separate countries. A total of 14 Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) items are used as the benchmark of labor disclosure checklist.

The authors' results provide evidence that the overall level of labor‐style communication is 66.4 percent. Companies in emerging market jurisdictions have the highest labor disclosure communication. Employment information is the most frequently disclosed set of items. Lesser communication is noted for training and education, and diversity and equal opportunity issues. Statistical analysis indicates that political visibility, jurisdictional, creditor pressure, and corporate governance variables are directly related to labor communication.

This study assumes that the 14 items used as the checklist benchmark from GRI (2006) are voluntary in each country. Results suggest that combination of legitimacy theory and stakeholder theory are relevant in explaining global context of labor communication.

A broader international survey of labor practices using the specific guidelines of the globally respected Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) has not yet been conducted. This study contributes insights for a better understanding of labor communication practices among three jurisdictional business systems.