"The recent crisis in the financial markets has revealed serious, systematic flaws in corporate governance and has cost union pension funds billions of dollars. However, the labor movement has begun to take charge of governance reform by mobilizing its pension assets, organizing other investors, and launching company-specific shareholder campaigns. Drawing on the academic literature on social embeddedness, I argue that unions will be more likely to succeed through investor activism if they form coalitions with key non-union actors. Through a detailed comparative case study of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations' efforts to stop the reincorporation of Nabors Industries and Stanley Works, Inc. and a larger empirical study of labor's 2002 shareholder campaigns, this article examines and outlines the factors that influence the success of these efforts. This research also elucidates how unions can continue to take the lead in corporate governance reform and build the necessary financial and political leverage to win shareholder campaigns."

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