My parents view pensions as gold standard. That it cannot be messed with and clearly this article shows that it can. The promise for your years of service can't be paid out.
Now something you believed would allow you to not worry until your passing, perhaps leave a small something to your children, won't be. Instead, you're beginning to worry about how you'll make ends meet in a few years with all the rising prices.
Defined benefit plans rely on the firm to correctly manage their pension plan, allocate funds for it, invest them wisely etc. In public sector there is political pressure to reduce forecast costs of a defined benefit pension. In many places it's completely legal to operate an underfunded defined benefit plan. Defined benefit plans are also traditionally fixed to a single employer, they don't fit well for a more mobile labor force.
For defined contribution plans individuals actually have control of the pension funds - they are just locked from access til retirement. They are generally government run, you aren't locked to a single employer. Individuals can set their own risk appetite and make their own decisions regarding fees etc.
Defined benefit plans are really popular because the pension amount is "guaranteed" but this guarantee is just an illusion. You can't magically make risk go away, just move it somewhere else. Many examples of defined benefit plans that blew up/were restructured/cancelled etc. Defined benefit is just a plain bad concept.
Defined contribution plans in the USA typically have an extremely small contribution by the employer. Works out great for the employer. Doesn’t work out so great for lower wage earners as they struggle to fund the plan.
Maybe they can work well with proper oversight, but the status quo for the majority of defined benefit plans is to be mismanaged and underfunded. See the role (union negotiated) defined benefit plans had in the US auto industry collapse. 60 out of the 100 largest corporate defined benefit plans in the US are underfunded, more than half! Chart in that article shows that 40% being funded is actually unusually high, historical trend is 15-20% of plans meeting funding levels. https://www.wsj.com/articles/companies-u-s-pension-plans-are...
Funding a defined benefit plan for lower wage workers vs paying lower wage workers more and contributing more to a defined contribution plan has exactly the same costs on the employer side. The only way the defined benefit plan appears to work out better for both parties is because we have legalized the employer not funding these plans to the appropriate level and hanging the supposed beneficiaries of the plan out to dry when it goes south.
Even ignoring the rampant underfunding issues defined benefit plans are a classic example of the principle agent problem where the interests/risk appetite of the fund manager and the fund members don't line up perfectly.