Washington ? Securities regulators took a step Wednesday toward giving shareholders greater say in companies’ decisions, tentatively adopting rules requiring companies to disclose how they choose candidates for their boards of directors.

The action by the five-member Securities and Exchange Commission was denounced as insufficient by a labor union leader, however. Amid the erosion of investor confidence from the recent accounting scandals, big state, union and professional pension funds have been pressing for changes to give shareholders more say in company moves on executive pay and other matters.

The SEC proposal “will do nothing to solve the problem of unresponsive boards of directors,” said Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. “The nomination process is a closed loop totally controlled by current directors and management. No amount of disclosure is going to change that.”

The disclosure proposal, to be opened to public comment for 30 days, is the initial part of a planned broader SEC initiative to enable shareholders to nominate company directors after demonstrating that the company had resisted legitimate requests by groups of investors.

Under current rules, shareholders are allowed to nominate candidates for director but they cannot put a nominee’s name in the company’s official ballot materials mailed to investors, known as the proxy. That makes it expensive and exceedingly difficult to mount a campaign for alternate candidates.

SEC Chairman William Donaldson has framed the changes as extending the work of the sweeping corporate accountability legislation enacted last summer at the height of the business scandals that sapped investors’ confidence.

“These rules are an important first step in improving the proxy process as it relates to the nomination and election of directors,” Donaldson said.