Last week, I speculated that the decision by IBM to stop providing its employees with a defined benefit pension plan was perhaps a sign that the end was near for real pensions. After all, IBM is not an ailing company and has the third-largest pension plan in America.

Today, Mary Williams Walsh has a front–page story in The New York Times speculating the very same sad state of affairs. You may remember that another rich and powerful company, Verizon, announced more than one month ago that it was ending its pension for its manager. The most damning quote in the story is this: “With Verizon, we’re talking about a company at the top of its game,” said Karen Friedman, director of policy studies for the Pension Rights Center, an advocacy group in Washington. “They have a huge profit. Their C.E.O. has given himself a huge compensation package. And then they’re saying, ‘In order to compete, sorry, we have to freeze the pensions.’ If companies freeze the pensions, what are employees left with?”

I do quibble with Walsh’s story (she generally does some of the best reporting on the attacks on pensions)–she traces the decline of the defined-benefit pension plan but does not tie the decline of unionization as the reason for the loss of real pensions.

And that brings us to the question: what is the response of either the labor movement or the Democratic Party to the end of real pensions? I see no outcry on the part of the Dems. And, other than press releases, what does the labor movement propose as a way of combating the decline of defined-benefit pensions?