AMO Currents - AMO Pension Plan: Clarification of the pension effective date requirements

AMO Currents - Posted: March 18, 2010

AMO Pension Plan: Clarification of the pension effective date requirements

As previously reported, the joint union-employer trustees of the American Maritime Officers Pension Plan recently agreed to revise the rehabilitation plan adopted by the trustees in compliance with the federal Pension Protection Act of 2006. The revised rehabilitation plan provides a "Preferred Schedule" that retains the unreduced 20-and-out pension benefit. The Preferred Schedule must be negotiated as part of AMO collective bargaining agreements. Prior to the revision, the rehabilitation plan provided that the unreduced 20-and-out pension would be eliminated.

The Pension Plan rules and regulations provide that a member's pension effective date must be after his or her last day of AMO covered employment. Because under the original rehabilitation plan a member was required to retire with a pension effective date prior to the effective date of the rehabilitation plan or else he or she would not be eligible for the unreduced 20-and-out pension, the trustees at the time decided to allow a member to continue to finish working a rotation of AMO covered employment so that he or she would not be required to leave a vessel in the middle of a rotation in order to have his or her pension effective date be prior to the deadline.

Since there is no longer any such deadline because the revised rehabilitation plan retains the unreduced 20-and-out pension benefit, a member must complete his or her rotation and have a pension effective date after his or her last day of AMO covered employment, in accordance with the Pension Plan rules and regulations.