As part of a new law designed to encourage more people to save for retirement, the U.S. Department of Labor has proposed rules to guide companies that automatically enroll workers in certain retirement savings plans.

The Pension Protection Act of 2006, signed recently by President Bush, makes it easier for companies to force employees to save for their retirement. I used the word "force," but I don't mean it in a negative way. After all, traditional pensions, known as defined-benefit plans, are about as rare as a belt on many a young teenager's pants. Both are left hanging.

Workers can no longer count on their employer putting away money for their retirement. Thus the 401(k) and similar employer-sponsored retirement plans were born.

For the most part, workers are signing up for them, electing to take pre-tax dollars and invest them in various investment options. But there are still holdouts. About one-third of eligible workers do not participate in these defined-contribution plans, according to the Labor Department.

To encourage workers to save, some employers decided to automatically sign up workers. The theory is that once you enroll employees in a 401(k), most won't make the effort to stop the contributions.

Some companies, however, worried that they may be sued for such a paternalistic move, have balked at creating an automatic enrollment system.

That's where the new law comes in. Chiefly, the law amends the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) to shield fiduciaries of individual account plans when certain default investment alternatives are selected for workers.

ERISA would essentially provide fiduciaries relief from liability for the investment outcomes. To get this liability protection, the Labor Department wants to make sure companies follow certain guidelines. Here are some key things the department proposes: