Trinity Mirror today, the rest of corporate Britain tomorrow. The publishing firm behind the People and countless regional newspapers has suspended two thirds of its final salary top-up contributions.
It can't afford to spend the £70m over three years it agreed with the fund's trustees. Once it became clear a debt re-financing was in jeopardy a decision was taken to withhold the cash. When the fund already has a £230m hole to close and total liabilities of £1.7bn there is an immediate concern the fund will never have enough money to pay pensions, especially when the baby boomer generation of workers are all retired after 2030.
More than 7,000 companies are saddled with unaffordable final salary pension promises made in an era when only a few people benefited, promises were loosely framed and investment forecasts were stratospheric and meant pension savings were worth four times what they are now.
Today, thanks to Trinity Mirror's former owner, the late Robert Maxwell and his £300m pension heist, we have a privatised pension scheme ensnared with thousands of pages of legislation that is impossible to disentangle.
The rules mean employers cannot steal directly from their schemes, but they can, as Trinity Mirror is showing, starve their schemes of funds needed to close ballooning deficits.
Should Trinity Mirror be condemned? Should chief executive Sly Bailey risk the company to protect the pension scheme or risk the pension scheme to save the company?
When a disproportionate number of the 7,000 schemes are in the manufacturing sector, it is hard to side with the pension savers. To protect their final salary linked pensions, which in most cases offer a retirement income that equates to two thirds of their last pay cheque, they would risk their employer's future and the UK's recovery. A massive lobbying campaign brought about the Pension Protection Fund (PPF), the government sponsored lifeboat scheme that maintains pension promises by taking over the funds of bust companies.
Surely our manufacturers need to be set free from these liabilities, most of which relate to staff that have moved on or have become pensioners?
If the schemes were not privatised, the solution would be easy. But they are considered private contracts and as such can be defended in the courts. Test cases have found that British judges, who benefit from the most generous final salary pensions in the UK and probably the world (even better than MPs), side with employees (funny that).
On the continent a pension is a gift of the state. Even when employers have played a role, pensions are paid by the government. Governments can downgrade pension promises across the board, for everyone, in a way that is fair.
For instance the former socialist government of Spain increased the retirement age, but told workers that started their careers at age 16 or 18 they would get their pensions before college graduates who started work at 21. By contrast, Tesco has told employees they must work till they are 67 for a full retirement income regardless of when they started.
France and Germany have bitten the bullet and cut pension payouts across the board and put their economies in a better position. The UK solution is to retain overly generous incomes for a small rump of workers and next to nothing for the rest.
To end the battle between the generations and between blue and white collar workers, a radical government would step in and nationalise the lot. A move to take over all the pension funds, put them in the PPF, apply the PPF rules and run them as one great big scheme would drive a stake into the heart of capital ownership and would be ruled out by the European Court of Justice.
The only other solution is for companies to "do a Trinity Mirror" and save themselves the cash today - kicking the problem down the road.
If the pensions regulator had any sense it would debate this problem openly. Young people need work with solvent employers more than they need to protect the fat pension of an over 50s middle manager.
But the regulator prefers to secretively and away from public glare follow its baby boomer brief, which is to protect the promises they made to themselves at all costs.
