The evidence comes from The Wall Street Journal’s Ellen Schultz and Tom McGinty; I’ve pointed out over a number of years that Schultz is one of the finest reporters on the topic of pensions in the traditional media. She and McGinty write:

Pensions for top executives rose an average of 19% in 2008, with more than 200 executives seeing pensions increase more than 50%, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.

The executive-pension growth stemmed partly from generous pension formulas, which are based on executive pay, according to the filings. Also adding to the pension jumps are arcane techniques that have received little scrutiny, including increases triggered when an executive reaches a certain age or when companies change interest rates used to calculate the pensions.

Executive pensions rose even as the share prices at the companies declined an average of 37% in 2008 and many firms froze employee pensions and suspended retirement-plan contributions.

The growth of such supplemental executive retirement plans, or SERPs — which can be worth tens of millions of dollars to executives — largely has been overlooked amid a backlash against executive pay, particularly at banks and other companies receiving taxpayer bailouts.[emphasis added]

  Let’s start with a basic premise: pensions are not supposed to make someone fabulously rich. The concept of a pension, at least for regular people, is that, having labored hard for decades, a person deserves a life of dignity in their golden years. A pension is supposed to provide, along with Social Security and personal savings or investments, a secure, stable retirement.

  The Journal article reveals a point that I have made in my new book, "The Audacity of Greed": at the same time that CEO pensions bestow a king’s ransom on the few, the corporate coffers are, then, left empty when it comes time to find money for the pensions of thousands of workers who actually make a company run.

  In a sidebar to this story, the reporters add on:

Companies are required to report the size of their top executives’ pensions, but sizing up the IOUs can require sleuthing through financial filings.

For one thing, the amounts shown in the pension table are rarely the full amount the executives are entitled to when they leave.

  Translation: company executives, and their complaint boards of directors who are usually filled with business cronies and friends who participate in the enrichment schemes, do their best to hide the truth from shareholders, workers, regulators and the public.

  This is not good policy for our country. What is happening is simple: corporate executives are pocketing the vast wealth of a company–wealth created by hundreds of thousands of workers–abandoning the concept that those people who built the wealth of the company should be secure in their retirement and leaving the people who actually make a company run to fend for themselves in their retirement years. In turn, the task of making sure people can survive in retirement is shifted to society.

  Now, I actually believe we should have a national pension system–but that system should be supported by companies paying into it, in a similar fashion to a national health care system. But, absent that national pension system, there is a void created–which is fashioning a retirement crisis that will last for several generations. It is a crisis that need not happen if the people running corporations adopted a view that the vitality of a decent society is found in broadly shared prosperity.