Really good story in today’s New York Times’ Sunday Business Section called “How Wall Street Wrecked United’s Pension” (registration required). Written by Mary Williams Walsh (who, I think, has done really good reporting on the attack on pensions), the piece shows how United’s pension fund money managers collected about $125 million in fees over the past five years. They invested money in very high-risk, high-return stocks: “At United, this freewheeling approach gave rise to investments in junk bonds, dot-coms and even what appears to be an energy venture in Albania.” But, now, the United workers are paying the price for those investments–the pensions have been jettisoned by the airline and workers just are not going to see the kind of money they had planned for.

For some time, I’ve felt that the pension fund scandals are a place to build a movement against corporations. Just think about the United workers: a sizable chunk of the workers are pilots, who were paid very well and typically voted Republican. But, there is a rage among tens of thousands of workers that they played by the rules, gave up compensation during their working years for something better down the road and, then, found that that promise could vanish with the stroke of a federal bankruptcy judge’s pen.