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Providing for Faithful Servants: Pensions at the Canadian Pacific Railway

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Mary MacKinnon
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Extract

Establishing an occupational pension plan became fashionable for large North American firms around the beginning of the twentieth century, and railways were pioneers in this trend. By the end of World War I the characteristics of many of the firms, and of their workforces, had changed considerably, but pension plan rules typically remained broadly constant until the 1930s. Despite unchanged rules, the kinds of workers pensioned, the average value of pensions, and the probability that retiring workers would receive a pension may have altered. Little is known about Canadian pension plans and less about the characteristics of workers pensioned. This article uses employee records from the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), one of Canada’s largest employers and one of the first to establish a pension plan, to examine older workers’ employment patterns and the probabilities they have of being pensioned.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , Spring 1997 , pp. 59 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1997 

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