What is Workers' Capital?

The concentrated nature of share ownership on the world’s capital markets means that large institutional investors – insurance companies, mutual funds, and pension funds – own the bulk of the world’s listed companies.

In many countries, a significant portion of these shareholdings is held in workers’ retirement savings, pension funds, and other investment vehicles, otherwise known as workers’ capital.As beneficial owners of these deferred wages, workers are the indirect owners of a substantial portion of the world’s equities, though pension asset allocation patterns vary between countries.

The largest shareholding bodies in Great Britain are the British Telecom and mineworkers pension schemes. In the US, it’s the public employees of California; it’s the civil service fund in The Netherlands, the workers’ pension fund in Denmark, and in Canada, the teachers and civil servants of Ontario.