Tom Fraser is a writer based in Toronto. He researches public sector pensions at Concordia University as an affiliate of the project Deindustrialization and the Politics of Our Time.
Cost-of-living adjustment clauses — which protect wages against inflation — used to be standard fare in collective agreements. By fighting to bring the COLA clause back, Canadian workers are refusing to bear the brunt of spiraling costs.
Finance’s conquest of the supports necessary to deal with the universal human fate of growing old spells certain disaster for our golden years. The retirement-financial complex should be fought tooth and claw.
Canadian Pension Funds, profiting off substandard elderly care, are like snakes eating their own tails. Fund managers shovel eldercare profits into investments intended to benefit the elderly — but retirees can’t profit off their own immiseration.
The Ontario Municipal Employees’ Retirement System, like pension funds everywhere, engages in socially harmful speculation and investment. Pension funds should be paid for by contributions and taxes, not financialization.
Almost a century ago, Canadian socialists advanced a vision for cities built in the interest of people, not profit, that included gorgeous public housing. We should look to their ideas to learn how we can revitalize public life.
One of Canada’s largest institutional investors, responsible for managing billions of dollars in workers’ pensions, has committed to fossil fuel divestment. It’s a good step — but without pressure from the labor movement, these promises will mean nothing.