Labor in the Age of Finance: Pensions, Politics, and Corporations from Deindustrialization to Dodd-Frank

Abstract

Sanford M. Jacoby's Labor in the Age of Finance fruitfully complicates the history of labor's decline in the United States since the 1970s. Jacoby is realistic about that loss of organizing, bargaining, and political power, yet he brings a fresh perspective to the familiar declension narrative. In a deeply researched, well-written study, Jacoby spotlights how labor leaders found in union pension holdings “a source of power outside the labor market to augment their power within it” (p. 5). At the heart of the book is a telling irony. By empowering efforts of shareholder claims to corporate ownership, labor ultimately facilitated “a wealth transfer from labor to capital” (p. 2). Along the way, however, Jacoby argues that labor unions forged a history of activism in the finance sector that is important in its own right and that in the future could be critical to the resurgence of workers' power in politics and at work.