Pension funds have come to play an increasingly important role within the new economy. According to Statistics Canada, in 2006, trusteed pension funds in Canada had $836 billion of assets and represented the savings of 4.6 million Canadian workers. Pensions at Work is a unique collection of papers that uses a labour perspective to deal with the socially responsible investment of pension funds. Featuring leading Canadian and international scholars, it builds on existing scholarship on socially responsible investment and on the growing interest of the Canadian labour movement in joint trusteeship.

What is unique about this collection is that it synthesizes three distinct themes - socially responsible investment, pension funds, and labour studies. The contributors address an array of critical issues such as gaps in the education of union trustees of pension funds, the impact of human capital criteria on shareholder returns, the influence of corporate engagement upon corporate performance, and the nature of public-private partnerships (PPPs). Although the essays in Pensions at Work all address the nexus between socially responsible investment, pension funds, and unions, each looks at a particular manifestation of that relationship through a different disciplinary lens. This collection moves the discussion to pension funds in which union representatives are also trustees, a relatively new approach that will be of great interest to institutional investors, the labour movement, and instructors in labour studies programs.

Jack Quarter is a professor and co-director of the Social Economy Centre at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. He is the author of Canada's Social Economy and Crossing the Line. He edited How to Start a Worker's Co-op and co-edited Partners in Enterprise: The Worker Ownership Phenomenon.

Jack Quarter's profile page

Isla Carmichael is the director of policy for the Ontario Expert Commission on Pensions, and a sessional lecturer at the Department of Adult Education and Counselling Psychology at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto.

Isla Carmichael's profile page

Sherida Ryan is a post-doctoral fellow, co-director of the Social Economy Centre and faculty member with the Adult Education and Community Development Program at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto.

Sherida Ryan's profile page