You remember the old refrain that had been adapted over time that goes roughly like this: you didn’t speak up when they came after so-and-so and, then, when they came after you, there was no one to speak up for you.

Well, today, it’s the Verizon managers. The data transmission company (Memo to New York Times: it’s more than just a telephone company), announced that it was freezing the defined benefit pension plan covering its 50,000 managers and moving people to a bigger reliance on a 401(k). Translation: we no longer have any obligation to our workers, who make the company run and who deserve something specific and defined they can count on in retirement. Instead, w’ere casting them into the casino atmosphere of the stock market.

This is a big move–and is yet another nail in the traditional pension system. Quoted in today’s New York Times story, Karen Ferguson, director of the Pension Rights Center, has it right: “If a company as large as Verizon goes in this direction it could encourage others to do likewise to the detriment of the retirement security of millions of American workers.”

Question to Verizon: as the company tries to cut down its managers benefits (who, I should point out, don’t have a union so they are subject to the complete whim of the execs), is it also cutting the pay and benefits of its CEO Ivan Seidenberg and the other top brass?