In the past few decades, caregivers, such as nursing assistants and home health aides, have come to compose the fastest-growing segment of the paid workforce in the United States. At the same time, corporate caretakers of workers’ savings, such as pension funds and mutual funds, have become the nation's largest investors, bound by fiduciary duties of trust. And unprecedented numbers of elder employees and retirees have become the biggest supposed beneficiaries of both care labor and trust capital, depending on health workers and asset managers in their daily lives. At the center of this emerging structure of work, wealth, and welfare lies the pension system, a telling crucible of class relations in our time. Several recent books across different disciplines examine the shifting politics of pensions in the United States and around the world. The spate of new studies presents an opportunity to explore the remarkable role of retirement funds in reorganizing labor and finance over the past fifty years. Rather than offering a historiographical critique of current work, this expository essay surveys the main findings of a larger and longer body of scholarship on organized labor and investment related to pensions. Though focused on the United States, it places the American story in a comparative context. The survey points to a fertile field for further study: as retirees have increasingly relied on professional asset managers and caregivers, the finance and health sectors have undergone converging crises over fiduciary duty and elder care, posing parallel challenges for organized labor.

在过去的几十年里，护理助理和家庭保健助理等护理人员已成为美国有偿劳动力中增长最快的部分。与此同时，养老基金和共同基金等管理工人储蓄的企业已成为美国最大的投资者，并受到信托义务的约束。数量空前的老年员工和退休人员已成为护理劳动力和信托资本的最大受益者，他们的日常生活依赖于卫生工作者和资产管理者。这种新兴的工作、财富和福利结构的核心是养老金制度，它是我们这个时代阶级关系的一个生动的考验。最近出版的几本不同学科的书籍探讨了美国和世界各地养老金政治的变化。大量新研究提供了一个机会来探索过去五十年来退休基金在重组劳动力和金融方面的显着作用。这篇说明性文章不是对当前的工作进行史学批评，而是调查了与养老金相关的有组织劳工和投资的更大、更长的学术研究的主要发现。虽然重点是美国，但它把美国的故事放在了比较的背景下。该调查指出了进一步研究的沃土：随着退休人员越来越依赖专业资产管理者和护理人员，金融和卫生部门在信托责任和老年人护理方面经历了双重危机，给有组织的劳工带来了并行的挑战。