"Correct me if I'm wrong (and I'm sure you will), but I thought under current pension laws you can't remove final salary benefits retrospectively, right?

So if you were on a 60ths scheme for example, and had served 30 years up till now, you'd still get 50% of your final salary when you retire - it's just that you switch to a defined contribution from now, i.e. the point where IBM made the change."

Correct. It should also be linked to RPI or CPI until then. Still not right though,