Currently, company employees and government workers pay premiums based on income, while the self-employed pay a flat rate.

FORBES: Work Begins on Reforming the National Pension

It covered workers in commerce and industry only (leaving out the self-employed, farmers, service workers and government employees), plus their spouses and dependents.

CNN: A Debt-Threatened Dream

Just behind the CNN's Cairo bureau lies the Bulaq neighborhood, a ramshackle area of dirt alleys and crumbling houses inhabited by factory workers, government employees (many of whom had to hold second and third jobs to scrape by), small storeowners, etc.

CNN: Analysis: Egypt's ailing democracy movement

Public health workers, law enforcement officers, public school teachers and other government employees can stop making payments on federal student loans after only 10 years.

FORBES: Magazine Article

The traditional view of government employees is as below average workers who could not compete in the private sector, and thus need to be protected by union work and seniority rules.

FORBES: Why Your Postman May Be Smarter Than He Looks

Outsourcing support to the private sector makes financial sense when budgets are tight, because there are fewer rules governing the use of workers there and original manufacturers may understand their products better than government employees do.

FORBES: How Politics Will Shape The Defense Downturn

However, Mr Crawford hit back saying the government "fully respects the rights of employees to remove their labour", and said the government had sympathy with the substance of the concerns of public sector workers and added the "UK government approach to pension reform is wrong".

BBC: Bureau motion and decision time