One labor leader, Derek Simpson, called the proposals a "smoke screen" to deal with a crisis in the provision of pensions.
Big business also provides a vehicle for investment that is likely to be central to the provision of pensions in the ageing OECD.
The Justice for the Magdalenes group said it was time for a compensation scheme to include "the provision of pensions, lost wages, health and housing services.
As Goldman Sachs, an investment bank, puts it, a new "instividual" market has been born.It would be a relatively small step from here to move to entirely individual pensions; that is, for companies to retreat from the provision of pensions completely.
This will cause disturbing policy implications in the provision of pensions and health care, which rely on continuing healthy tax revenues from the working population.At least these countries are rich enough to make such provision.
Britain's annuity market is the biggest in the world, bigger than those of France, Germany and Italy combined, countries where generous state provision of pensions means there is less incentive to save into private pension schemes.
The popular explanation is that Chinese households have been saving an increased slice of their income because of greater uncertainty over the provision of pensions, health care and education.
Under this new dispensation, individual rights, as well as the rights of families, were secured not by individual economic action but by state action and by the provision of pensions and benefits.
This had to include, said the group, "the provision of pensions, lost wages, health and housing services, as well as redress, and that is open to all survivors, putting their welfare at the forefront.
