Racedo,
In the days before links were available, companies weren't putting lots into pensions.
At the the risk of you loosing off another Gordon Brown broadside, it was actually Nigel Lawson who cast the first stone. It was he who decided to allow employers to take contribution breaks from contributing to final salary pension schemes and to also tax scheme surpluses above a funding level of 105%. Unions and memberships didn't mind. Ironically (and this was before my time) the pension holidays were presented as a way to stop companies from growing vast pension funds (and subsequently allowing them to pay employees whatever pensions the unions demanded).
So the unions played along with anything that seemed to allow members to get benefits earlier by making the earlier drawdown of benefits from employers far easier to acquiesce to. And members too, demanded and introduced lower retirement ages but actually had the audacity to start living longer. Who blames myopic union stupidity though? So, it was probably Lawson who created the funding crisis, not Brown (and it was Lamont who decided to reduce ACT).
Increased longevity (to name but one thing) based on over-optimistic actuarial assumptions has resulted in the decline of final salary pensions. 20 years too late, someone eventually realised that if the relationship between entitlement to a pension and salaries has not changed, but sovereign bond yields, mortality rates and interest rates have, then the present value of a future promise has/had to change. Even as babyboomer membership climbed, no one bothered to think ahead.. . actuaries, g'ment, employers, trustees and employees, none of them stopped to question where the money was going to come from.
Finally, thankfully, policies, expectations and commitment levels are starting to converge. Like it or not (and I'm guessing you won't), that's the reality.