This website uses cookies.

By clicking the "Accept" button or continuing to browse our site, you agree to first-party and session-only cookies being stored on your device to enhance site navigation and analyze site performance and traffic. For more information on our use of cookies, please see our Privacy Policy.

Rethinking Pension Fund Activism for Employment Equity and Capital Stewardship

Paper Session

Saturday, Jan. 7, 2017 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM

Hyatt Regency Chicago, Columbian
Hosted By: Labor and Employment Relations Association
  • Chair: Teresa Ghilarducci, New School

Pension Fund Activism: Can Labor Maintain Its Momentum in Light of Declining Defined Benefit Funds?

Jayne Zanglein
,
Western Carolina University

Abstract

This paper will examine the evolution of capital stewardship and the prospects for continued activism in the future.
Jayne Zanglein
Professor
Executive Director NCAMP
Western Carolina University
Email: jzanglein@email.wcu.edu

Pensions, Politics and Power in the 1980's

Larry W. Beeferman
,
Harvard University

Abstract

An endeavor framed by the rubric workers capital was given special impetus thirty years ago by a book entitled The North Will Rise Again: Pensions, Politics and Power in the 1980's. Inherent in that endeavor was a challenge for workers and the organizations which represent their interests posed by the tension between capital as an abstract thing to which are attached claims to financial reward/profit and capital as a manifestation of concrete relationships implicating questions “among others“ of power and reward. At the level of thought the challenge has been a difficult one; it has been even problematic in practice because of political, legal, ideological, and other constraints which have narrowed or limited such opportunities as there might have been for meaningful action. With an eye to such lessons as might be learned from the last 30 years or so, the remarks will explore whether and how actions in the future taken in the name of workers capital might be apposite with the achievement of possible goals or objectives of workers and the organizations which represent their interests

Mortgage Fraud, the Great Recession, and Pension Fund Activism

Thomas Herndon
,
Loyola Marymount University

Abstract

This paper discusses mortgage fraud, the Great Recession, and Pension Fund Activism

Public Pension Fund Activism and Firm Value

Tracie Woidtke
,
University of Tennessee

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between public pension funds engaged in shareholder activism and firm value from 2001 - 2013.
Discussant(s)
Daniel Pedrotty
,
American Federation of Teachers
Harold Pollack
,
University of Chicago
JEL Classifications
  • J3 - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs