Pensions at Work: Socially Responsible Investment of Union-Based Pension Funds

by Jack Quarter, Isla Carmichael, Sherida Ryan

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442691858
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	05/24/2008
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Jack Quarter was a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto.

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.
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.

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Tables
Foreword
Preface
Contributors

1 Socially Responsible Investment of Pensions: Issues and Debates
JACK QUARTER, ISLA CARMICHAEL, AND SHERIDA RYAN

2 Just Having It Is Not Enough: Labour’s Voice on Pension Boards
JOHANNA WESTSTAR AND ANIL VERMA

3 Fiduciary Duties, Investment Screening, and Economically Targeted Investing: A Flexible Approach for Changing Times
GIL YARON

4 Human Capital–Based Investment Criteria for Total Shareholder Returns
JANE THOMSON COMEAULT AND DAVID WHEELER

5 Corporate Governance and Environmental Risk Management: A Quantitative Analysis of ‘New Paradigm’ Firms
GORDON L. CLARK AND JAMES SALO

6 Social Accounting and Reporting for Economically Targeted Investments: The Expanded Value Added Statement
LAURIE MOOK

7 Economically Targeted Investments, Union Pension Funds, and Public–Private Partnerships in Canada
JOHN LOXLEY

8 Economically Targeted Investing: Financial and Collateral Impact
KATHRYN MANLEY, TESSA HEBB, AND EDWARD T. JACKSON

9 Pension-Fund Management and Socially Responsible Investment
RAN GOEL AND WES CRAGG

10 Training for Effective Action: Evaluation of the Quebec Federation of Labour Training Program on the Bargaining and Administration of Pension Plans
ALAIN DUNBERRY