It seems appropriate that a company's own pensions should be senior claims over shareholders which might indirectly be responsible for part of other pensions or retirement funds somewhere down the line.
Indeed. It seems next level insanity that we dont have wage liabilities (capped at some decently high amount per month like 10k a month to avoid c suite abuse) at the absolute front of the line followed immediately by pension liabilities (again with some capping mechanism to avoid c suite abuse) and then followed by everything else in the evemt of a bankruptcy enshrined in bulletproof law. It should just be how it works with no exceptions.