United States

When C. William Jones took early retirement in 1990 after a 30-year career with a New York phone company, he expected his loyalty to be rewarded. But the firm he left is very different from the one he joined. Once owned by AT&T;, New York Telephone Co. became NYNEX and then, in 2000, Verizon Communications. And at a time of ferocious competition in the industry, some of the benefits he says he was promised when he joined in 1959 have either not materialized or, most recently, been slashed. Retirees have to foot an ever larger part of the bill for their...