What Happens When Transactional Leadership Fails to Transact?

As a Verizon employee, I have been pondering the impact of yanking management's retirement benefits. And, white it is true, that we still have a 401k, what is also true, is that the company has broken their agreement with us. The rationale: we were never going to be able to keep it in the long run anyway, so lets cut our losses now. But today, I began to ponder the question, what happens to an organization that is dependent on transactional leadership, when it fails to transact? Transactional leadership is based on the notional that people are fundamentally motivated by compensation, namely money. Inherent in transactional leadership is the common inattention to other motivational factors. Hertberg would identify that in providing retirements Verizon was merely meeting a hygiene need, or the needs associated our most basic needs for safety and welfare, and that our motivational needs have not been addressed. So what can we expect to see will happen? Will employees really buy the line that "everyone else is doing it"? Will they be happy that our senior management had the foresight to cut our losses early enough to sustain and grow the business and prevent irreparable harm? Or, will employees feel embittered by Verizon's failure to transact and look for either employment with companies that will transact or will address motivation in other ways? I am not naive enough to believe that Verizon's management workforce is about to up and leave. I do however, suspect that fewer of the employees in my age bracket will pursue much of a tenure with Verizon. To the outsider, that doesn't seem like a big deal. However, to anyone who knows telecom, specifically RBOCs, you understand the significance of incumbent employee job knowledge and how difficult it can be to outsource work or hire off the street versus bringing people up through the ranks. Unless senior management aggressively pursues a leadership style that addresses other fundamental motivational needs (in contrast to transactional leadership), Verizon could find itself in a less than enviable situation as it again absorbs another company at the forthcoming close of the MCI deal. Disenchanted, disengaged are never good to work with, but try blending them with another company's culture.