Your plan and the trust run on different calendars, and your employees move between them.
Employers in a multiemployer plan also sponsor benefits directly for office, management and other non-union roles. When someone moves between those roles, eligibility rules and plan years collide, and people end up covered twice or not at all. We structure the direct plan so it fits around the trust’s calendar.
The trust earns eligibility from past hours. Your plan grants it from a start date.
That difference creates the gaps and the overlaps, and each one has a fix that belongs in the plan document.
Promotion Out of the Unit
A foreman promoted into management may keep trust coverage for months from banked hours. If your plan also covers them from day one, you pay twice, so we tie the direct plan’s start to the end of trust coverage. Bridge rules prevent duplicate coverage on promotion.
Moving Into the Unit
A worker moving into covered work may not earn trust eligibility until hours accumulate. If your plan ends on the transfer date there is a gap, which is why the direct plan needs a bridge rule. Bridge rules prevent coverage gaps on transfer.
Different Plan Years
The trust renews on its schedule and your plan on yours. We align enrollment and elections so a mid-year transfer does not strand a spouse’s coverage or a spending account election. Aligned elections protect family coverage in transfers. Align both calendars.
Waiting Periods
Your plan cannot apply a waiting period longer than 90 days, while multiemployer plans have their own accommodation for hours-based eligibility. We make sure the bridge rules satisfy both, so neither plan applies a wait it should not. Compliant waiting periods protect both plans.
The employer mandate counts all your full-time employees, union and non-union alike.
Applicable large employer status and the offer-of-coverage rules look at the whole company. How trust coverage counts toward your offers follows specific IRS guidance.
Counting Everyone
Union and non-union full-time employees together decide whether you are an applicable large employer. A company that thinks of itself as small because most staff are in the trust may not be, which is why we run the count. Counting all full-time and full-time equivalent employees, union members included, decides ALE status.
Trust Coverage and Your Offers
IRS guidance gives employers required to contribute to a multiemployer plan a specific way to treat trust coverage as an offer when its conditions are met. Counsel confirms it applies; we confirm the facts it depends on. IRS relief for multiemployer coverage needs careful review.
Reporting Both Populations
Forms 1095-C have to reflect union and non-union employees alike. We line up what the trust provides with what your plan knows, and we can help you with the filing. Complete 1095-C reporting covers union and non-union employees alike, month by month.
The direct plan should be designed and tested for the people it actually covers.
Collectively bargained employees are treated differently under several federal rules, so the direct plan has to account for them.
Nondiscrimination Testing
Cafeteria plan and self-insured medical testing can treat collectively bargained employees differently from everyone else. We apply the right treatment before testing, and counsel confirms it where the result is close. Correct treatment keeps nondiscrimination testing accurate. Counsel confirms close results.
Benefits Next to the Trust’s
Non-union employees compare their plan with the trust’s. We benchmark the two, because a promotion that comes with worse coverage is a hard one to accept. Benchmarking eases promotions out of the bargaining unit. Employees compare the two plans when they are promoted.
One Place for Questions
Employees who have been in both plans need one place to ask about either. Their questions come to our team, so HR is not left interpreting a trust plan it does not control. One contact point helps employees in both plans.
What employers with union and non-union staff ask.
Can non-union employees join the trust plan?
Some trusts allow it through a participation agreement and some do not. The trust documents decide, and we compare that option with your own plan before you ask. Trust documents decide non-union participation. Compare that option with your own plan before you ask the trustees.
Who covers an employee who moves mid-month?
Both sides may have obligations for that month. We set a written rule for transfer dates, so the trust remittance and your plan’s eligibility agree. A written transfer rule prevents month-of-move disputes. A written rule makes the trust remittance and your plan eligibility agree.
Does the trust’s plan year have to match ours?
No, and it rarely will. What has to match is how you handle the move between them, which is why we write it into your plan documents. Documented transfer rules keep both plans aligned. Write the rule into your plan documents.
Also in Compliance & Oversight
Related guides.
Manufacturing Employers
Shift workers, plant claims, funding choices and union coordination.
Where the Rules Come From.
The laws and rules named on this page link to the statute or regulation they come from. This is general information, not legal or tax advice, and rules change, so check the current text.
Affordable Care Act (Public Law 111-148)
The 2010 health reform law, with later amendments, behind employer coverage, reporting and market rules.
ACA Reporting (26 U.S.C. 6056)
The statute behind employer reporting of offers of coverage on Forms 1094-C and 1095-C.
Cafeteria Plans (26 U.S.C. 125)
The tax code section that lets employees pay certain benefit premiums before tax.
Send us your renewal.
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The renewal letter
Your current plan summary
Contribution split by tier
Enrolled counts by tier
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