Transnational domestic labour regulation: Using domestic disclosure regulation to influence foreign labour practices

An important tool in the arsenal of "decentred" regulation, including reflexive law, is corporate information disclosure. In theory, disclosure regulation can have important normative influence on corporate behavior, because it acts like a 'risk virus' injected into the corporate decision-making matrix that companies will seek to manage and control. The challenge for regulators is to identity the scope of disclosure that will cause corporate responses of the sort desired by the state. This dissertation considers the potential role of disclosure regulation as a tool for influencing labour practices beyond the borders of the regulating state and, in particular, within the vast global supply chains of multinational corporations. The emergence of a new activist movement concerned with supply chain labour practices has elevated the risk to brand-based companies of being associated with abusive labour conditions. That risk might be exploited by disclosure regulation that aims to 'encourage' companies to pay greater attention to the conditions of work under which their products are produced. But this legal strategy is controversial and wrought with dangers; it can intrude on domestic labour policies and leave workers worse off than before. The goal of the regulation must be foremost the empowerment of the workers and their organizations in those states and the indigenous and emerging global social movements who assist them. Drawing on a qualitative examination of two major apparel corporations---Nike and Levi-Strauss---that have slowly embraced supply chain transparency, this dissertation presents an argument that mandatory factory disclosure could make a useful contribution to this goal of reducing labour abuses within global supply chains.