granting credit for years of prior service

[Gudgergirl]

Employer established a 401(k) Plan on 1/1/05. Plan's eligibility provisions provide: you may defer as of your date of hire but must have a year of service and be 21 to receive employer contributions. Plan entry date for purposes of employer contributions is next following 1/1 or 7/1.

One 10/1/05 Employer hires several employees from local hospital and wished to grant them credit for prior service with hospital for purposes of eligibility and vesting and to allow the new employees who met the yesr of service requirement immediate entry into the plan on 10/1/05. Plan was amended to provide this.

2010 rolls around and EGTRRA restatement is signed which includes language stating the years of service with local hospital count as years fo service for eligibility and vesting.

Employer gets around to reviewing SPD which also contains this language and says: wait! we only did this when we hired a gaggle of employees on 10/1/05. We don't do this anymore.

As it turns out Employer has only hired one employee from local hospital since 10/1/05 and it was recently enough that they can comply with the plan provisions.

My question is: is there any problem with amending the plan to delete this provision?

Have other experienced this issue when prior service grants are made with a particular organization and the employer continues to hire employees from such organization? ANy thoughts/comments are helpful.