It's difficult to imagine the anguish and frustration being experienced by workers at United Airlines. Many of them have worked a lifetime with a promise of full pension benefits, only to have that promise broken.

United last week won court approval to rid itself of its pension obligations, pushing those obligations instead onto to the backs of U.S. taxpayers. And even after the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. works out details, it's likely that most retiring United workers will only see, at most, about two-thirds of the pension benefits they had been led to believe they would receive.

That won't be a problem shared by United's top brass. A prime example is United CEO Glenn Tilton, lured away from the oil industry, who has a guaranteed retirement plan outside of the company's regular pension plan - one that gives new meaning to the phrase "golden years."

While United's rank-and-file try to figure out how to survive on reduced benefits, Tilton will be taking to the bank $4.5 million United put in trust for him. Just three months after taking over at United, Tilton guided the airline into bankruptcy and engineered the forfeiture of United's pension responsibilities. Meanwhile, perhaps seeing the writing on the wall, he had already cashed in on $3 million from those guaranteed retirement trusts.

That stark contrast in retirement outcomes should raise a red flag of warning for union leaders, who must now understand how easy it is for a CEO with a multi-million-dollar retirement trust to promise just about anything at the negotiating table - knowing that breaking such promises won't bring harm to his or her retirement plans.

United's failure and the impending crisis for so many large U.S. companies puts new emphasis on the notion that individual workers need to take more responsibility for their retirement. The defined-benefit pension plans, once thought to be so secure, have been revealed for what they really are - empty, unkeepable promises. That is especially true because of the fragile nature of the government's Social Security program, which has become the backbone of the average worker's retirement portfolio.

We have an idea, and it's not altogether original. Congress should make it more difficult for companies to shed their pension obligations. And lawmakers could begin with one, simple rule: Before the government will agree to take over a private pension plan, that company's top executives have to agree to give up their golden parachutes. There is no logical reason why all the pain needs to be concentrated on a company's ground floor.

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May 17, 2005