The report trom Lord Turner's Pensions Commission at the end of last year called for a series of policles to adaress lne looming crisis in Britain's pension
Some of his proposals appear relatively sensible and progressive, but we have to remember two kev factors:
• Firstly Turner's proposals centre on driving up the age of official retirement over time to 68 or 69 - deferring still further the point at which workers can access the deferred wages that pensions represent, many cases beyond the point where workers can enjoy healthy years of retirement.
And secondly, even though there are calls for employers to be compelled to make contributions to a new National tension Saving Scheme tor each of their employees, the brunt of the contributions will still be extracted from the workers mense ves — leavine doe malo elements of the current failed system intact.
True, Turner has also managed to annoy some of the right people.
He has annoyed Gordon Brown by proposing to reinstate the link between the Slate pension ano averace earnings; annoyed the most tight-fisted employers by proposing they should be required to pay towards their employees' pensions, and annoyed sections of the financial establishment by proposing to siphon off a chunk of lne polental savings in pri vate pension schemes into a new savings scheme.
But Turner has effectively proposed policies life expectancy of the poorest workers, who have lived a lifetime on low wages, often linkea with hazardous or stressful jobs, poor diet, smoking and other threats to
has been much smaller) capitalist enterprises and politicians like Tony Blair are keen to present the issue of pensions as one of "sustainability".
They portray the private sector as some torm of benevolent "partner" rather than the organised body of employers that have continued to cream off profits, and which now charges sky-high fees to administer private and occupational pension schemes.
While workers are being expected to pay to get out of around the world have collapsed, leaving their retired staff and those who had paid years into company schemes stranded, the larger-scale robbery is not just the result of evil-doing by rogue individuals or companies.
British pensioners have been systematically ripped off by governments for decades, most spectacularly in the years since Margaret Thatcher the link between pensions and average earnings.
Today's basic state pension of £82 per week would be almost 50 percent higher -£122 per week - if the link had remained intact.
Instead the basic state pension has rapidly eroded as a
Commission figures show that top British companies, relying on continued stock market gains to boost pension funds, took "holidays" from pension contributions staggering £28 billion from 1988 to 2002.
Many more companies cnealea tell way our or contributing to the state pension by evading taxes.
Meanwhile the drive towards private pensions initiated by the Thatcher government (modelled on the pensions privatisation General Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile) has resulted in the accumulated savings of become another rod through which workers' own resources are used to beat them. Far from protecting British and multinational capital from anv increase in costs. and forcing workers to pay an increasing share of the cost of their own retirement, any progressive solution to the pensions crisis would:
• No increase in the retirement age. Pension rights for all men and women at age 60, reducing in line with the expansion of the economy.
• Switch from wasteful, unaccountable pension funds to a Pay As You Go system based on progressive taxation.
• Force multinational and