In one of the biggest pieces of irony since – well, ask me the one about New York's Irish firefighters collecting money in their boots for The Cause in the 1990s some time – it turns out that the biggest threat to some workers hoping to get pension benefits may be pension plans themselves.

Businessweek did a bit of connect-the-dots investigation into the lives of some workers in Massachusetts who found that by being downsized and having their jobs neutralized and outsourced for a third of the pay, it actually benefited their own pension plans – in a case of cannibalism gone wild.

Consider the case of a former school custodian, who made $20 an hour doing his job, until his rural school district bid out the maintenance contract. Aramark Corp., who you frequent fliers mostly recognize for its bars and restaurants in America's airports, also runs a major facilities management business, which scooped up the contract.

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