46: How Capital Uses Workers’ Pensions Against Them w/ Kevin Skerrett
Summary
Host Matthew Rensky interviews Kevin Scarrett, a former QPUP pension researcher, to explore how capitalism co-opts worker pensions through financialization. They trace the shift from 19th-century demands for universal public pensions to the 1950s rise of employer-specific funds, which were later transformed into aggressive private equity vehicles. Scarrett explains how legal fiduciary duties now force union representatives on pension boards to prioritize profit maximization over worker or environmental interests. This structural change has turned Canadian pension funds into engines for glob…
Topics discussed
Introduction and the fiduciary dilemma
Tenant organizing and AI in labor markets
Origins of pension demands in 19th-century labor movements
Personal history: Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan
The shift from public to workplace-based pensions
US auto industry and the rise of private pensions
Financialization of the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan
Canada Pension Plan: origins and initial structure
CPP Investment Board and global privatization
The neoliberal turn and the end of the post-war consensus
Defeat of labor and the 'There Is No Alternative' narrative
Kevin Skerrett's realization of pension fund contradictions
The OMMERS scandal and public-private partnerships
Legal constraints on fiduciary duty and return maximization
The failure of governance reform and environmental lobbying
NDP managerialism and the loss of radical politics
Moral outrage vs. structural change in pension funds
The need for social control over financial capital
Deregulation history and the money fetish
Case studies: Saskatchewan farmland and Brazil privatization
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