Temporary Workers - Service Credit

[Guest ircreader]

Our plans give vesting and eligibility service to workers who have worked at our company through a PEO or other vendor and are hired as full-time permanent employees. We include a paragraph in the new employee guide stating that if someone did work for us as a temporary worker but were not on our payroll, they may be eligible for service credit in our 401k plan and defined benefit plan. We also get reports from our biggest PEOs/vendors and search for any temp workers who may have been hired by us. We ask the new employee to provide us with a statement from the PEO or vendor stating the dates he or she performed work for us and we credit the vesting and eligibility service accordingly.

Any opinions on whether we are meeting our burden under the law (isn't the burden on the employer to find these employees - please keep in mind that we have roughly 100,000 employees so identifying them can be difficult)? Anybody handle this differently?

[Guest ircreader]

Just in case anyone else ends up needing information on this subject, I have finally found some information. Here is a link to BenefitsBlog that has some excellent information addressing the question I posed above, as well as, other information re temporary workers and ERISA:

http://benefitscounsel.com/archives/001234.html