This month I will look at a couple of web resources dealing with employee benefits law, with a focus on pensions.  Rather than try to provide links to many resources, I will highlight two good web sites that deal with this area of the law.

Of course, you can always start with an overview of pension law. Cornell Law School has a good one on their web site. Go to http://www.law.cornell.edu/ and choose the Law About link. From there choose Employment Law and then choose Pensions. This is an overview of the area of law and includes links to the federal law, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (better known as ERISA), and various state codes dealing with labor and employment. Washington state statutes dealing with this area are in title 49, with Employee benefit plans at RCW 49.64.

Cornell links to both the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation and to the Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration. I want to explore both of these web sites.

First, we will look at the Employee Benefits Security Administration at http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/.  This site’s goal is to assist “Americans covered by the 730,000 private retirement plans and six million private health and welfare plans and the plan sponsors and members of the employee benefits community.” It covers both health benefits and pension plans, and has much information on laws, proposed and final regulations and rulings, and interpretations of ERISA’s provisions. Use the link for Laws and Regulations and you will also be able to access both advisory opinions and interpretive letters. While you cannot search them individually, you can look at the archives of Advisory Opinions as far back as 1992. Final regulatory rules are archived from 1996 forward, and applications for individual exemptions from ERISA are archived from 1996 forward. In addition, this web site contains some great pamphlets for consumers about retirement plans and saving for retirement, QDROs (Qualified Domestic Relations Orders), and a link back to the laws and regulations. The web site also includes compliance assistance for employers and links to ERISA enforcement. It is a good one-stop spot for much information that is helpful when dealing with pension and other employee benefits. While the site is not very pretty, or necessarily easy to navigate – as it highlights public relations materials for the government proposed agenda, while hiding the links to the best information - it does contain the necessary links to the laws and regulations.

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation is not the best-known organization. “PBGC is a federal corporation created by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974. It protects the pensions of American workers and retirees in private single-employer and multiemployer defined benefit pension plans. Operations are financed by insurance premiums set by Congress and paid by sponsors of defined benefit plans, investment income, assets from pension plans trusteed by PBGC, and recoveries from the companies formerly responsible for the plans.” The web site, located at: http://www.pbgc.gov/ contains information for retirees and workers, including how to find out if their pension plan is covered by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, and if so, how to apply for their benefits, change their beneficiaries and more. However, even more important, the web site includes a link for Practitioners, which contains an abundance of information. The Law, Regulation and Informal Guidance link includes the current CFR, Federal Register documents, technical updates from 1995 forward, Opinion Letters from 1974 forward, and QDRO requirements, along with model QDROs which can be used to fashion agreements when a benefit plan has been terminated. The links even include disaster relief announcements for plan administrators and sponsors that help them determine whether they can delay payments and premiums while dealing with their situations.
These two web sites are critical for practitioners in pension law. For those who do not practice in this area, it is good to know about these web sites, as they contain the basic federal laws and regulations that concern pension benefits.