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Police and fire departments have binding arbitration legislation as an alternative to other job actions.

Retirement benefits have case law declaring them to be deferred compensation.

Employers are concerned about the total compensation package. In contract negotiations the employer usually doesn't care how the package is divided between cash payments and benefits. Federal legislation has determined that an an employee has a vested interest in the company pension plan after 5 (?) years employment.

I was working for Boeing in 1963 during a layoff before the legislation was passed. The inside joke was that very few people ever collected a pension. An engineer, a long time employee, had a heart attack several months before he was was old enough to retire. The story was that the company sent him a pink slip while he was in the hospital.

The Oberto Sausage Company had operated under a union contract for years. The company was sold and a judge stated that the sale voided the union contract and the employees lost their benefits I think this included retired employees who had worked for and were collecting a pension. This is plain theft!