In the end, the pension plan will only apply to new hires (sucks to be them, I guess), and the language of the clause now says the company will make a "reasonable effort" to find a position with equal pay when it wishes to demote someone. Who defines what constitutes "reasonable effort" is a good question.

Some people suspect this is a trojan-horse clause that will allow the company to skirt seniority rules and lay off older, higher-paid employees, by first transferring/demoting them to a different pay category where they will have no seniority.

Now we'll discover if those suspicions are true.