Trends in Union Corporate Campaigns - US Chamber of Commerce

the unions are in the process of transforming their movement
from one based in representing workers to one based in managing
their collective financial resources.
The potential of this strategy was first identified by Peter F. Drucker
in 1976 in his book Unseen Revolution: How Pension Fund Socialism
Came to America, and was shortly afterward set forth more directly by
Jeremy Rifkin and Randy Barber, who spoke of
… laying out the groundwork for both the takeover of
pension capital and the implementation of an alternative
economic base, one independent of the private-capital
sector. 22
This idea was thus ripe for action when the Sweeney
administration took over the AFL-CIO in 1995. As described by
Richard Trumka, Secretary-Treasurer of the federation,
Back in 1995, we did a survey of all the programs around
here—what was happening to labor, where were we
headed? We found out that workers’ money—not only
was it not being used to help workers as investors or
shareholders, but it was actually being used against us.
So we decided to organize our money essentially the way
we organize workers. 23
This decision led to a series of actions, the details of which lie
beyond the scope of this briefing. 24 For our purposes, it will
suffice to state that the objectives were (a) to capture effective
control over proxy-voting decisions by pension fund trustees, (b)
to expand substantially the definition of fiduciary responsibility
so as legitimize the voting of these proxies on the basis of
social policy and other non-financial grounds, (c) to create an
infrastructure to promulgate this new standard of accountability
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Trends