This section explains how you may be eligible for past employment or intermediate employment. Either type of employment can increase the amount of your benefit payment if you meet the eligibility requirements detailed in this section.
Important Topics
Past Employment
Continuous Past Employment
Special Past Employment
Limitations
Maximum Limits
Intermediate Employment
Past Employment
In the section titled Plan Coverage, covered hours and contributions were explained. Your covered hours and contributions are used for calculating your benefit payment.
In some circumstances, work that you performed before you became covered under the Plan may also be counted in the calculation of your benefit. This type of work is called past employment.
There are two types of past employment:
- Continuous past employment
- Special past employment
The eligibility rules for both types of past employment are explained below. You can qualify for either or both depending on your situation.
If you qualify, your unbroken past employment is used to calculate either of the following:
- Non-contributory service benefit under the contribution account benefit formula (if your first covered hour is in 1987 or later) or
- Past service credits under the five-year average benefit formula (if your first covered hour is before 1987).
Your past employment does not count for vesting (with some exceptions, see rules in section Participation and Vesting) or protect you from a loss of Plan benefits.
Periods of self-employment (that is, employment as a sole proprietor or partner) do not qualify as past employment.
Continuous Past Employment
Continuous past employment is your unbroken employment with an employer before the employer starts making contributions to the Plan for your bargaining unit. To qualify, you must be a member of that bargaining unit when it becomes covered by the Plan, that unit must not have previously participated in the Plan and you cannot have any prior Plan coverage.
Your continuous past employment is broken if you worked less than 600 hours for the employer in any period of two consecutive calendar years after being hired. Your employment before the break will not count toward your continuous past employment. To help protect you from a break, each month you are away from work with the employer because of an approved leave of absence, qualified disability absence or qualified military leave counts as 50 hours of work.
You do not qualify for continuous past employment if you are a corporate officer at the time of your first covered hour or earlier.
Special Past Employment
Special past employment is your unbroken employment after age 30 in a bargaining unit represented by a Teamster local union located within the 13 Western states. To qualify, you cannot have any breaks between this employment and your covered employment and you cannot have any prior Plan coverage. Employment in a bargaining unit represented by a Teamster local union located outside the 13 Western states can never qualify as special past employment.
Your special past employment is broken if you did not work in this type of employment for more than 10 consecutive calendar months. Your employment before the break will not count toward your special past employment. To help protect you from a break, each month you are away from this type of employment because of a qualified disability absence or qualified military leave counts as a month of work.
Special past employment does not include any period of your work that already counts as continuous past employment.
If you are a corporate officer at the time of your first covered hour or earlier, you qualify for special past employment only if that period of past employment was covered by a collective bargaining agreement with a Teamster local union located within the 13 Western states.
You do not qualify for special past employment if you are in an employee group represented (or employed) by a Teamster local union outside the West at the time of your first covered hour.
Special Limitations on Eligibility for Past Employment
You may not qualify for any past employment or your past employment may be limited if you are employed in one of the following groups at the time of your first covered hour:
- An employee group represented by a Teamster local union outside the 13 Western states or an employee group employed by a Teamster local union outside the 13 Western states. If you are employed in one of these groups, you do not qualify for any past employment except as provided in uniform rules established by the Trustees. These rules include actuarial criteria that must be satisfied by the group to qualify for any past employment.
- An employee group that enters the Plan as a result of a certified change of collective bargaining representative, and benefit liabilities are transferred from another multiemployer pension plan to the Western Conference of Teamsters Pension Plan. If you are employed in one of these groups, you do not qualify for any past employment except as determined by the Trustees when the group is accepted into the Plan.
- An employee group that was covered under the Plan at some time in the past, left the Plan and has been approved to rejoin the Plan. If you are employed in one of these groups, you do not qualify for any past employment except as determined by the Trustees when the group is accepted into the Plan.
Maximum Limits on Past Employment
If you qualify for past employment, there are rules for determining the maximum number of years and months of past employment you can use to calculate your non-contributory service benefit.
If your first covered hour is:
- After 1986 and before 2012, you can use up to 10 years of past employment.
- After 2012 and your unit is within the 13 Western states, you can use up to 10 years of past employment.
- After 2012 and your unit is outside the 13 Western states, you can use up to 5 years of past employment.
In any case, your years of past employment can never be greater than the period of your unbroken past employment.
Note: If your first covered hour is before 1987, see the Five-Year Average Benefit section for an explanation of the maximums on past employment under the five-year average benefit formula.
Intermediate Employment
If you leave covered employment and later rejoin the Plan after 1986 as part of a new Teamster bargaining unit, you may be eligible for a noncontributory service benefit based on your intermediate employment.
To qualify for intermediate employment, you must meet all of the following conditions:
- You must be a member of a Teamster bargaining unit when it becomes covered by the Plan, and
- Your bargaining unit must enter the Plan after 1986, and
- You must not have a forfeiture of service while you are away from covered employment, and
- Your bargaining unit must never have been covered under the Plan.
The rules on intermediate employment are similar to those for past employment as explained under Past Employment in this section.
The same maximum limits on past employment also apply to limit your intermediate employment. In addition, if you receive credit for years of past employment under the Plan’s five-year average benefit formula or contribution account benefit formula the maximum limit on your intermediate employment is reduced by your years of past employment.
The same special limitations that apply to past employment if you enter the Plan as part of a certain type of employee group also apply to intermediate employment.
If you qualify, your unbroken intermediate employment is used to calculate your non-contributory service benefit under the contribution account benefit formula.
Your Administrative Office can provide more information about how this benefit is calculated and whether you qualify