retirement credited service date

[Guest kathy parks]

I have been employed with the same company for 21 years and during that time, when you are on benefits for more than 30 days that overage time is adjusted from the Retirement credited date. IE 1 year of service-I am on benefits for 6 weeks-so now mo Retirement credited date is 11 months 2 weeks. I was advised that this is ERSIA rules? Is this true and if so, where is this information in the ERSIA web site. I know that FMLA states this is at the descresion of the employer. Please tell me where this information is.

[david rigby]

Pardon my ignorance, but I don't know what you are talking about. Can you elaborate?

What do you mean by "on benefits"? "Overage"?

What kind of benefit program are you referring to? medical? pension? other? all of the above?

Is there a union involved?

[Guest kathy parks]

Yes Sir, I do appreciate your replying to my question. It is unionized--Communication Workers of Americe (CWA) and I am speaking about retirement credited service date for pension.

In reading the rules of ERISA so confused and I do not know exactly what time is accrued and what time is not accrued. When I said benefit, I was meaning being off from work for a period of 6 weeks due to an operation. We are paid by the company during this time but exactly where does it state that this time is not accrued for credited service.

Also, if I worked for about 2 years doing about 30 hours of OVERTIME each week, is there anything which states this additional time is to be accrued?

As you can tell, I am wanting to retire asap.

[Guest kathy parks]

Sir, I went back and read what I had typed to you. I realized I am probably still not making my question clear so let me try again.

I have been employeed by my company since 12-16-1980. My 30 year retirement date, I feel should be 12-15-2010. However, during this time, I have had 4 major operations, I also changed my working status 2 part time for about 1 year and I also took a 45 day departmental leave of absence when my dad was ill. My retirement credited service date is now 12-29-2011. I understand that my retirement credit service date changed due to my part time status and due to my departmental leave but my time out for the 4 operations, which I was paid during the time I was recouperating, was not accrued for my retirement credit service date. I am being told by my supervisor this is due to ERISA law. If this is the law, please tell me specifically where this is in the ERISA information.:confused:

[Mike Preston]

You will need to access, at a minimum, the plan's Summary Plan Description. If that doesn't answer your question, you will need to get a copy of the actual Plan Document.

I tried to reconcile your comments about a 30-year pension with the information available on the website that had the SPD for the CWA negotiated plan. Here is a link to the definition of service under that plan:

http://www.cwaitu.com/NPPSPDotherfea.html

However, that may not be the plan you are in, because there is no 30-year retirement option specified, nor is the crediting of service anywhere close to what you have described.

Maybe if you identify the exact plan somebody can get a hold of the SPD somewhere off the web and help you to understand the retirement date you are being quoted.

[Guest kathy parks]

I'm sorry, possibly I should have advised you that I am employed with Bellsouth Telephone Co.

The information which you gave me sounds kind of like what Bellsouth has, but I'm not sure. I am being advised that the information is in ERISA but I still can't find it.

[MGB]

Kathy,

The service crediting rules under ERISA (primarily in regulations interpreting ERISA from the Department of Labor, sections 2530.200b-1 through 2530.200b-9) are only minimum standards. Those rules will not say that the plan MUST ignore the service when you are out on medical leave, but rather ALLOWS the plan to ignore it. (By extending your retirement service date, they are effectively ignoring the time you were out on medical leave).

That is why the Summary Plan Description is important. That will tell you the specific rules that your plan has adopted. The plan administrator's claim that they do it because of ERISA is not exactly true. They do it because ERISA allows them to, not because it forces them to.

Once you have the exact rules that your plan uses, then you can compare them to the ERISA rules if you want to determine what they are doing is legal. That is not an easy to do task as the rules are very complex and are easily misunderstood when your plan uses different terminology than the regulations (e.g., you will never find anything talking about a retirement credited service date).