On December 3, 1972, Swiss citizens cast a decisive vote to transform the system of old age provision that had been in place since the end of World War II. The two proposals to be voted on reflected diametrically opposed projects for the future of the AHV. On one side, an initiative sponsored by the Labor Party (Partei der Arbeit, the former Communist Party) outlined an ambitious expansion of social insurance: the people's pensions (Volkspensionen). This proposal was countered by a plan designed by the Federal Council that aimed to anchor in the federal constitution the so-called three-pillar doctrine. According to this doctrine, pensioners' incomes would be ensured by a combination of universal basic AHV pensions (first pillar), supplemented by compulsory occupational pensions (second pillar), and topped up by voluntary and fiscally encouraged individual savings accounts (third pillar). This counter-proposal combined two other pending initiatives. The first, launched by the Socialists, was a more modest version of the people's pensions that demanded a better integration of the AHV and occupational schemes. The second one, launched by bourgeois politicians, insurers, and pension lobbyists, was designed as a bulwark against people's pensions and reaffirmed the three-pillar doctrine that had been developed by business circles since the early 1960s.

According to a report circulated among employers' federations in the summer of 1969, both left-wing initiatives implied an “economic and socio-political transformation” of the pension system and represented the “most important socialist challenge the bourgeoisie has confronted in decades”.