Archon Fung

“ Employers, too, rarely used the information from the disclosure system to discredit unions – they had more effective tools at hand. The decline of union strength beginning in the early 1980s also made many in the labor movement reluctant to “air dirty laundry” in public for fear of providing ammunition to antiunion employers and damaging public support for the labor movement. ”

“ Disclosing Union Finances to Minimize Corruption
In the 1950s, about one-third of the U.S. workforce in the private sector was unionized (as compared to 8 percent in 2005) , and unions represented the majority of workers in steel and auto manufacturing, trucking, construction, food processing, and other industries central to the economy. Union leaders like John L. Lewis, Walter Reuther, George Meany, and Jimmy Hoffa were well-known national figures. The considerable economic and political influence exercised by labor unions provoked concern in the business community and in Congress. ”

“ By the 1970s, however, the WHO surveillance system was moribund. Only plague, cholera, and yellow fever were subject to international reporting rules and member states routinely violated even those reporting obligations. In practice, member governments’ incentives to protect national reputation and economic stability often outweighed incentives to join in international efforts to report disease outbreaks. At the same time, vaccines and antibiotics minimized some common infectious diseases in the United States and Europe, easing political pressure for effective surveillance. ”

“ By making it possible to reach large audiences with rich and customized information at little or no cost, the Internet challenges the premise of election law that controlling and disclosing funding controls corruption. ”

“ Instead of new rules or stiff penalties for doctors, the institute called on Congress and state governments to require standardized public disclosure by health-care organizations of incidents where mistakes resulted in death or serious injury. Public disclosure would hold providers accountable for serious errors, create incentives to reduce them, and inform patients’ hospital choices. The report also recommended that Congress take action to encourage voluntary and confidential reporting by doctors, nurses, and other health-care workers of less serious errors and near misses. ”

“ Improving public understanding of the propensity of vehicles to roll over was important because rollover accidents remained the most deadly auto accidents in the United States and were increasing. Rollovers accounted for less than 4 percent of all auto accidents but accounted for about a third of driver and passenger fatalities (61 percent of SUV fatalities and 22 percent of passenger-car fatalities) . From 1991 to 2001 the number of drivers and passengers killed in all automobile accidents in the United States increased by 4 percent, while deaths in rollover accidents increased by 10 percent. ”

“ Disclosing Chemical Hazards to Reduce Workplace Health and Safety Risks A National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health survey conducted in 1972 found that “approximately 25 million U.S. workers, or one in four, [were] potentially exposed to one or more of ...nearly 8000 hazards” and that 40 to 50 million Americans, amounting to over 20 percent of the population, may have been exposed to hazardous chemicals. [18] Often neither employers nor employees were aware of the presence of hazardous substances in the workplace. ”

“ Managers of large stock exchanges, seeking to gain listings from foreign companies, found their national reporting rules created a competitive disadvantage. The accounting profession, dominated by five international firms through most of the 1990s, feared that conflicting statements of profits and losses under different national rules could impair accountants’ credibility. Investors, seeking higher returns in foreign markets, found variable results a new source of uncertainty. ”

“ Chronic diseases such as heart ailments, cancer, and diabetes were the largest causes of preventable deaths in the United States, killing more than 1.5 million people each year. Scientists agreed that the single most important factor in preventing and minimizing the effects of such diseases was improved diet. Before Congress acted, however, consumers had no way to assess the healthfulness of most packaged foods. Supporters of the law hoped that it would create new incentives for Americans to eat healthier foods and for manufacturers to market healthier products. ”

“ As of 2006, the drinking water contaminant disclosure system appeared to be unsustainable. Reports had improved little over the years in scope, quality, or use. Interestingly, new emphasis on homeland security raised the possibility of requiring more timely monitoring (and perhaps disclosure) . In 2004, experts convened by the federal Government Accountability Office ranked “near real-time monitoring technologies” to detect contaminants as the highest priority in improving drinking water security. ”

“ Private and not-for-profit employers were covered if they had one hundred or more workers, but employees were excluded from that count if they had worked for fewer than six months in the past year or fewer than twenty hours per week on average. That meant that a large number of small businesses were not required to provide advance notice of layoffs or closings.
The definition of plant closing and mass layoff also left many potential company decisions involving large employment cuts outside the targeted transparency system’s disclosure requirement. ”

“ Enforcement of accounting standards, however, was left to national regulators. The board remained a private membership organization with no authority to compel nations or companies to adopt its disclosure rules. The public character of its authority rested solely on the endorsement of its processes and standards first and foremost by national governments and then by complex networks of national politicians, regulators, accounting firms, stock exchanges, companies, investors, and other market participants. Enforcement practices varied widely among nations that represented major markets. ”

“ When the debate got down to specifics, the American Medical Association and the American Hospital Association opposed the kind of hospital-by-hospital disclosure of serious errors that would be meaningful to consumers, although the American Nurses Association and a variety of consumer groups supported such transparency. Organizations representing health-care providers argued that information about errors should have broad protection from discovery in lawsuits. ”

“ Following a tragic accident at a pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, in 1984, in which deadly gas killed more than two thousand people in surrounding areas and injured more than a hundred thousand, the U.S . Congress required manufacturers that produced or used large quantities of a selected list of toxic chemicals to report annually on quantities of their release into the air or water or onto land, chemical by chemical and factory by factory. ”

“ When disclosure caused some large companies to make voluntary, immediate, and drastic reductions in toxic pollution, federal officials began to refer to the requirement as one of the nation's most successful environmental regulations. By the late 1990s, the disclosure system was credited with reducing toxic releases by nearly half in little more than a decade. ”

“ Antiregulatory sentiment ran high in the United States in the mid-1990s, following gains by conservatives in the midterm elections of 1994. Experts in government and the private sector debated safeguards and determined that no new regulatory system was needed for genetically modified foods. Risks could be considered product by product – just like risks associated with other advancing food technologies. Interestingly, the U.S . food industry favored a mandatory safety assessment for genetically modified foods, although the industry opposed mandatory labeling. ”

“ Community reinvestment groups lobbied succes sfully to include improvements in disclosure, such as reporting of applications as well as loans; reporting of the race, sex, and income of borrowers and applicants; and reporting by a broader range of mortgage lenders. 184
As Congress expanded the scope and depth of this transparency system, it gained wider use. Advocacy groups used mortgage lending data to document constraints on credit in their communities and to negotiate new mechanisms for low-income lending with individual banks. ”

“ Rollover star ratings themselves remained controversial, as did the longer-established star ratings for crashworthiness in front and side impacts. The Transportation Research Board, as well as consumer groups and auto insurance associations, charged that star ratings gave consumers a falsely positive impression of safety, since one-star vehicles could have a 40 percent chance of rolling over, and that ratings diminished in usefulness when most vehicles earned four or five stars. ”

“ The FDA recommended that labels feature statements that products were (or were not) genetically engineered or were made (or not made) using biotechnology, rather than statements that products were “GMO free,” since some degree of contamination seemed unavoidable. 246 In an unrelated regulatory change, the United States also introduced rules to standardize labeling of “organic” foods, a growing portion of the U.S . food market. Those rules included a requirement that foods labeled organic could not contain genetically modified ingredients. ”

“ In this crisis atmosphere, Congress debated different methods to improve standards of democracy, fiscal responsibility, and transparency in private-sector labor organizations.
Political compromise produced the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA) , which created standards for democratic governance and required unions to periodically reveal detailed information regarding financial practices and governance procedures. ”

“ In 2006, the reform of the corporate financial disclosure system remained a work in progress. The costs of more rigorous disclosure, especially to small businesses, and the reach of reforms to companies headquartered in other countries were among the many controversial political issues. ”

“ Many firms now post on the Internet data sheets for all their products, and a number of Web sites offer searchable databases. Some manufacturers use disclosure as a competitive tool, offering their customers more information than OSHA requires, including guidance on how to comply with disclosure requirements, training materials, and experts to assist customers. ”

“ The extent to which workers comprehend disclosed information about chemical hazards and take protective measures in response also remains unclear. Surveys have shown that employees are generally able to understand only around 60 percent of information in chemical data sheets, [29] with more-educated workers doing significantly better than those who are less educated. [30] Even in cases where workers understand safety information, surveys suggest that they often make only limited use of it. ”

“ Even this modest, disclosure-based response to economic restructuring involved significant political compromises. Opponents of advance notice argued that it would restrict the capital mobility that was increasingly important given international competition from countries like Japan and South Korea. In so doing, it would further widen labor productivity gaps with the rest of the world, making U.S . companies less competitive. ”

“ The introduction of the new transparency system led to fairly rapid and significant changes in the overall grade distribution in county restaurants (as noted, the grading system existed before the disclosure requirement) . When the program began, 58 percent of restaurants received an A grade, a number that grew to 83 percent by 2003. The incentives to improve are significant. Jin and Leslie report that after grade posting became required, restaurants receiving an A grade experienced revenue increases of 5.7 percent (other factors held constant) ”

“ Federal enforcement authorities use the data to ferret out violations of spending limits. Candidates use the data to gather information about their opponents and sometimes have a reputational interest in disclosing campaign finance information beyond what is required by federal law. In the 2000 and 2004 elections presidential candidates disclosed all their contributions on campaign Web sites. 167
The Internet is fundamentally changing the dynamics of campaigning and of campaign finance disclosure. ”

“ By 2006, all fifty states and the District of Columbia had created some form of sex offender registry and had provided for community notification of offenders’ places of residence. [58] Notification methods varied widely from state to state, from active communication by police via door-to-door visits, mailings, and community meetings, to notice via hotlines or Web sites. [59] The constitutionality of state laws in Connecticut and Alaska was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2003 after lower courts struck them down as violations of due process and on other grounds. ”

“ The new capabilities of information technology not only marshaled far-flung resources to identify the source and character of the disease but also helped to combine the scientific expertise of many nations to bring the epidemic under control. ”