...as greed and airlines run by accountants erode at our T&C's...
Careful now, that is a huge generalisation BYMONEK...! We are a very careful, prudent profession, but not a penny-pinching lot - those are your day-to-day "managers".
411A; you confuse the result (pilots losing pensions) with the cause (financial mismanagement in general). Pilot salaries are not the whole of the costs of the airline - not that they are in consequential - but the huge oil prices rises seen that have clobbered even the most financially sound airlines are but one of the other costs that have caused airlines to look to any and every cost to keep themselves afloat.
Salaries may well have been set highly in the old days, even post dergeulation prior to the emergence of many Southwests in many an airline's backyard, but hindsight is a wonderful thing, and rubbing people's faces in it is neither polite nor gentlemenly behaviour.
The fact is that lower salaries at that time may have helped to some extent, but other costs have risen as well (IT, fuel, GDSs, support, infrastructure), while governmental support has fallen - the effect of that might not be so great on a company's reserves as one might think.
Now the salaries had to fall in today's competitive environment - one cannot argue with that - however the speed and pace of change are not things that have either been forecast by the cleverest brains or your average pilots who left for overseas work.
Remember that not a long time ago pensions were fully funded. Nobody has stolen this cash - things have just not turned out as expected. While executive greed in the US has been shocking as usual in respect of their own compensation, interest rates, stock markets and longevity of pensioners did more than their fair share of help in diminishing the value of the pensions as well.
While nobody does or should expect the US taxpayer to foot the bill (while many other jobs have no such luxury of even a pension) for the pensions shortfall through the PBGC (profit is erroneous as a term - it has assets for the pensions onloaded to it at the moment that have gained on the stockmarket over the year), some sympathy might be nice.