A collectively bargained plan runs on different rules than a plan you sponsor yourself.
A Taft-Hartley welfare fund is not one employer’s plan. It is governed by a joint board of trustees, split evenly between labor and management, and funded by every signatory employer under the contribution schedule written into their own collective bargaining agreement. An employer whose workforce crosses union and non-union roles is often running two different benefit structures under one roof, and the two do not follow the same rules.
The trust owns the plan. The employer owns the contribution.
Under the Labor Management Relations Act, a jointly administered welfare fund must be governed by trustees appointed equally by the union and by management — no single employer, including a large one, controls plan design or eligibility rules on its own. What a signatory employer controls is narrower and more exacting: reporting hours correctly, remitting contributions on the schedule the trust sets, and staying current, since ERISA gives a delinquent trust fund the right to sue for unpaid contributions, plus interest and liquidated damages.
Reading The Agreement’s Benefit Language
Eligibility is usually built on an hours bank, not a hire date, and a contribution rate that steps up at intervals the agreement sets, not the renewal calendar. Getting either one wrong reads as a benefits error but is actually a contract-reading error.
Reconciling Contributions Against Hours
The gap between hours reported and hours actually worked is where delinquency exposure hides, and it is rarely intentional — it is a reporting mismatch that compounds every pay period it goes uncorrected.
A Mixed Union And Non-Union Workforce
The union roles run on the trust’s plan and the trust’s calendar. The non-union roles run on whatever the employer sponsors directly. Treating the two as one population, even by accident, is how eligibility errors happen.
The question is usually what you signed, not what you can change.
Plan design and eligibility rules belong to the trustees, not to any one contributing employer — so the advisory question for a signatory employer is rarely whether the plan should look different. It is whether the employer’s own reporting, remittance and workforce classification actually match what the agreement requires.
Contribution Schedule Review
Confirming the rate, the step-ups and the hours-bank rules actually being applied match what the current agreement says, not what an older version said.
Delinquency Risk Review
Catching a reporting gap before a trust does, since the fix is the same reconciliation either way and the cost of finding it first is lower.
Non-Union Benefit Coordination
Structuring the benefits the employer sponsors directly for its non-union roles so eligibility, waiting periods and plan year do not collide with the trust’s own calendar.
Bring us your current agreement and contribution statements →
Questions employers ask about Taft-Hartley plans
Can we change what the union plan covers?
Not unilaterally. Plan design and eligibility are set by the joint board of trustees, not by any single contributing employer — including one paying a large share of the fund’s contributions.
Do we still file a Form 5500 for this plan?
The trust files for the plan itself. A signatory employer’s own Form 5500 obligations apply to whatever it sponsors directly, not to the multiemployer plan it contributes into — worth confirming which is which if your files show both.
What happens if our contributions fall behind?
ERISA gives the trust the right to sue for delinquent contributions plus interest and liquidated damages, and that right does not depend on whether the employer meant to fall behind — only on whether it did.
Send us your renewal.
We’ll tell you whether it looks competitive, where we see opportunity, and the five questions we’d put to your carrier. No cost, and no obligation to move anything.
The renewal letter
Your current plan summary
Contribution split by tier
Enrolled counts by tier
Four documents — two more if your group is 50 or more. Nothing else; every extra one is a reason to postpone.
An independent employee benefits consulting firm. We look at the entire benefits program — cost, plan performance, risk and administration.
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