Labour-Sponsored Investment Funds

Over in this thread on breadnroses, "steppenwolf" provided a large list of links to sites discussing various aspects of the democratization of the economy. I'm pretty busy these days, so I've resolved that I'm going to spend my limited available blogging time to going through the reading list "steppenwolf" so generously provided.



I begin with his link from the ILO about LSIFs. It mainly deals with the Quebec Federation of Labour's "Solidarity Fund." Worth (in 2003) over four billion dollars, the fund seeks to counter economic recessions and de-industrialization by seeking out and financing small to medium-sized provincial businesses that conform to certain core values of the labour movement.

It's been relatively successful, earning a decent return on workers' pension funds. (Personally, I don't think that money should earn more than slightly above the rate of inflation, but these count as active investments in real economic undertakings, so higher rates of return are okay there.)

As this article from the wonderful (still going????) independent Canadian labour magazine Our Times points out though, there is a problem with getting workers to buy into the whole process of investing in the capitalist process. As well, these provincial labour investment funds have been designed with loopholes and such that some of them are merely tax dodges for Bay Street, with a gloss of union participation in them only.

Most of this criticism comes from Buzz Hargrove and the CAW, which is odd, given that the whole "playing by the system's rules" critiques undercuts his own support for the Liberal Party of Canada. That aside, there is a danger in getting invested (mentally and financially) in the current world of Canadian finance. Many union pension funds get invested in companies that work to undercut labour power, that pollute the environment, that engage in illegal, inhuman practices, ... that "hurt the very people they're supposed to help." At the same time though, some financing mechanisms will be required in the post-capitalist world, and worker-controlled pension funds could be one such means.