BENEFITS DIGEST

PBGC wants more from the multiemployer plans that received special financial assistance, the federal aid that shored up troubled union plans. Segal reports the proposed annual compliance reporting would add governance and investment records and procedures for locating missing participants, with redactions permitted, and it applies only to the plans that received the assistance, which report through 2051. Comments are due December 15. The additional reporting awaits White House paperwork approval, and plans’ existing reporting requirements stay in place.

Stephanie Gonzales, a union organizer and service member, sued the Service Employees International Union and its Pennsylvania healthcare affiliate, alleging she was fired over her military service and leave in violation of the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) and the Pennsylvania Military Affairs Act. The complaint’s interest for employers is the reminder that USERRA’s reemployment and nondiscrimination duties reach every employer, unions included, and interact with leave and benefits administration. These are untested allegations in a complaint filed October 20.

Mayer Brown unpacks a September 18 IRS Employee Plans newsletter correcting the widespread assumption that every SECURE and SECURE 2.0 amendment is due December 31, 2026. Under the newsletter as the firm reads it, discretionary changes a plan has already put into operation generally do need amendments by the end of 2026, while many required amendments come due only after the relevant provision lands on an IRS Required Amendments List, with later dates generally applying to collectively bargained and governmental plans. A separate [Notice 2026-33](https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/n-26-33.pdf) extends the deadline for optional qualified long-term-care distribution amendments to December 31, 2027. The firm’s practical point is to track the document deadline and the operational compliance date separately.

The Foundation’s answer to the recurring question of when SECURE 2.0 amendments are due is an inventory, not a single date. Amendments on the IRS 2024 Required Amendments List are generally due December 31, 2026, the 2025 list generally runs to December 31, 2027, and certain collectively bargained and governmental plans have until the end of 2028 and 2029. Discretionary changes follow their own timing, and operating in compliance now matters independently of when the plan document catches up.

Judge Gregory B. Williams grants summary judgment to Kraft Heinz in its suit to stop Teamsters Local 355 from arbitrating a grievance over a former Dover plant employee’s eligibility for the company retiree health plan. The collective bargaining agreement’s arbitration clause is broad, but its benefits section commits questions and disputes about benefit programs to the insurance policies and plan documents, and the plan documents supply their own procedures for eligibility disputes. That carve-out takes the grievance outside arbitration, and a permanent injunction will issue.

A health vendor’s savings estimate is only as useful as the assumptions behind it. Milliman’s guide to evaluating point solutions, the separate specialized programs sold alongside a medical plan, asks employers and Taft-Hartley plans to start with the problem they’re trying to solve and the population they want to reach. Pricing deserves close attention, including what counts as an engaged member, which cases trigger a fee and whether shared savings can be independently measured. Before signing, sponsors should agree on the baseline, data access, reporting and performance guarantees they’ll use to judge results. They should also check whether the service duplicates existing benefits and who will handle implementation and member outreach. The strongest sales presentation may still produce a poor fit if the plan can’t measure the promised value or members can’t navigate the extra program.

A confirmed bankruptcy plan didn’t end the fight over CarePoint Health’s employee retirement money. Health Professionals and Allied Employees, a union representing workers at the New Jersey hospital system, has asked the Delaware bankruptcy court to enforce its February administrative order, compel immediate payment of the 2024 employer 401(k) contributions and hold the reorganized debtors, Hudson Regional Hospital and the hospital managers in contempt. A court-approved stipulation required the debtors to escrow the 2024 contributions in equal monthly installments from March through August 2026 and remit them to the plan’s third-party administrator, Corebridge Financial, by August 31, with lost earnings calculated as ERISA requires. The motion says the 2023 contributions were paid but no 2024 escrow or payment ever happened. The filing presents the union’s side; objections are due October 26, and the hearing is set for November 19.

December 31, 2026 is an important retirement plan amendment deadline, but it isn’t the deadline for every change. Segal explains which amendments are due this year, which follow the IRS’s separate timetable for individually designed plans, and which qualify for later deadlines. The year-end date applies to non-governmental single-employer plans, including 403(b) plans not maintained by public schools, while collectively bargained plans have until the end of 2028 and governmental plans until the end of 2029. The date matters most for the long list of discretionary features that trigger amendments only if a plan has adopted them, such as in-service distributions at 59½, emergency savings accounts, Roth treatment of employer contributions, the $7,000 cash-out limit, student loan matching and hardship self-certification. Extra time to amend the paperwork didn’t give plans extra time to follow the law. The amendments must reflect when each provision actually took effect for the plan.

KFF’s annual explainer lands ahead of Medicare open enrollment, which runs October 15 through December 7. Beneficiaries with employer or union retiree coverage can lose it permanently by switching between traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage, because many employers offer retiree benefits exclusively through one or the other. Sixty-five percent of beneficiaries did not compare options during the last enrollment period. For 2027, the average beneficiary will have 35 Medicare Advantage plans to choose from. On the drug side, the Part D out-of-pocket cap reaches $2,400, and the new GLP-1 Bridge Program offers $50 monthly copays for weight-loss coverage outside Part D. The brief also notes that roughly 32,000 current beneficiaries are set to lose eligibility starting in 2027 under the reconciliation law’s immigration provisions.

Air ambulance operator PHI Health filed at least six additional suits in early October seeking payment of surprise-billing arbitration awards, against Cigna Healthcare in the Western District of Virginia, Highmark West Virginia, CareFirst of Maryland, Presbyterian Health Plan in New Mexico, UMR in Kentucky and the outside administrator 90 Degree Benefits in Ohio. They join PHI’s pending suits against Anthem affiliates in Kentucky and Missouri and an Indiana case filed in September that named roughly 70 employer and union plans as defendants. The complaints follow a common template, seeking court enforcement of arbitration awards the payors allegedly ignored, and PHI alleges Anthem alone owes nearly $30 million on more than 1,200 awards nationwide. According to the Maryland complaint, the arbitrator ruled for PHI after CareFirst failed to submit an offer or pay its arbitration fees. PHI says $19,492.87 remains unpaid months after the award became binding. In the Kentucky and Indiana cases, PHI also names employer plan sponsors as defendants in their fiduciary capacity for keeping an administrator that allegedly failed to pay binding awards. These are allegations no court has tested. Any self-funded sponsor whose administrator handles surprise-billing disputes now has a reason to ask how many awards involving the plan remain unpaid.

Judge Cogan denied the hospital system’s motion to dismiss in its entirety. Three self-funded union welfare funds allege that NewYork-Presbyterian’s contracts with insurers violate the Sherman Act and New York’s Donnelly Act through three kinds of terms. An insurer that wants any NYP hospital in a network must allegedly take every NYP facility at the highest coverage tier, a single negotiated rate applies flagship-hospital pricing at every location, and gag clauses block price disclosure. The court found the funds could bring the claims because they bear the hospital costs themselves; the plans, not their network vendors, are the direct purchasers with standing to sue over the contracting that sets the prices they pay. The proposed class reaches everyone who purchased in-network inpatient general acute care from the system over four years, and the case now heads into discovery.

The deadline depends on what the amendment does. Most plans adopting optional features under SECURE and SECURE 2.0 must update their documents by December 31, 2026. Required changes follow a different schedule tied to IRS guidance and the agency's annual Required Amendments lists, and later deadlines apply to certain union-negotiated plans, governmental plans, and public school 403(b) plans. These are deadlines for updating plan documents, not permission to delay following rules already in effect. One wrinkle from the IRS's September clarification helps sponsors: if the IRS later issues guidance about an optional feature a plan has already adopted, the further amendment implementing that guidance gets its own, later deadline. The IRS expects to issue final regulations on automatic enrollment, long-term part-time workers, and required minimum distributions, and the Roth catch-up requirement is expected to join the 2027 list, pushing that amendment deadline to December 31, 2029.

Dairy Farmers of America closed its St. Albans Creamery in Vermont, the Teamsters local took the closure to arbitration as anti-union retaliation, and the company announced it would stop paying its 85% share of health premiums for the 44 bargaining-unit members on October 1. Judge William Sessions III ordered the premiums continued until arbitration concludes, with an exception for anyone who lands coverage with a new employer. The judge found that lost health coverage is the kind of harm an arbitrator can't later repair, and courts can order an employer to preserve the status quo so that arbitration doesn't become a hollow formality. Employee declarations described a $15 copay becoming a $3,000-a-month prescription and family COBRA premiums near $2,500. The court declined to force an arbitration date, since the parties' chosen arbitrator isn't available until January, and noted a disputed internal memo proposing 'idling operations' aimed at 'Union Decertification,' which the company says is an AI-generated fake.

A published Tenth Circuit decision hands boilermaker retirees a win on three fronts. The multiemployer plan paid early retirement benefits to workers who withdrew completely and refrained from jobs classified under collective bargaining agreements, and the trustees read "withdraw completely" to disqualify retirees who took any job with any contributing employer. The court rejected that reading. The plan's language did not disqualify a retiree who took a job, like one at a sporting goods store, outside the union work the plan covers, and giving trustees discretion to interpret the plan did not let them override its clear terms. The court also revived claims that had been dismissed as too late. The plan could not enforce its two-year deadline to sue because its denial letters had not disclosed that deadline. And a denial letter alone did not establish that retirees knew the trustees had breached their duties, a distinction that revived claims for 66 retirees under a separate three-year filing deadline. Every administrator's denial template should state the deadline to file suit.

Milliman turns this month's IRS clarification into a plan-by-plan checklist. The dividing line is whether an amendment is required or discretionary. Optional SECURE and SECURE 2.0 features a plan has already put into operation, such as letting participants take employer contributions as Roth, generally must be reflected in a plan amendment by December 31, 2026, under Notice 2024-2's extension, with more time for collectively bargained, governmental, and public school 403(b) plans. Required amendments follow the annual Required Amendments List and often land later: the Roth catch-up requirement is expected on the 2027 list, making its deadline generally December 31, 2029. The forward calendar matters too. Automatic enrollment, long-term part-time, and remaining minimum-distribution requirements will each be listed only after final regulations, which are not expected to apply earlier than the plan year starting six months after they are issued. The near-term task for calendar-year plans is an inventory of optional features already in operation, because those carry the year-end 2026 date.

A collection fight over surprise-billing arbitration awards has arrived on employers' doorsteps. PHI Health, an air ambulance operator, [filed suit](https://digest.theinnerfirm.com/docs/phi-health-v-anthem-complaint-2026-09-15.pdf) in federal court in Indiana on September 15 to collect just over $4.3 million it says Anthem left unpaid on awards issued through the No Surprises Act's independent dispute resolution process. One claim targets the plan sponsors directly. PHI alleges they breached their duties by choosing and keeping Anthem and failing to monitor whether it paid the arbitration awards. That claim names the sponsors, not Anthem. The defendants include roughly 70 employer and union-affiliated plans and their sponsors, among them Eli Lilly, General Motors, Walmart, Kroger, State Farm, Indiana school corporations, and joint union-employer benefit funds. The complaint also claims plan benefits directly under ERISA using payment rights transferred by the patients PHI transported. PHI asks the court to enforce the awards under the No Surprises Act itself or, alternatively, under the Federal Arbitration Act on the theory that participating in the arbitration process creates an enforceable agreement. Whether those statutes allow this kind of collection suit is a disputed question. These are allegations at the filing stage, and no defendant has responded. Self-funded sponsors whose administrators handle these disputes now have a concrete reason to ask how the awards are being paid.

In International Painters and Allied Trades Industry Pension Fund v. Allegion Access Technologies, No. 1:25-cv-02624 (D. Md. Sept. 16, 2026), Judge Brendan A. Hurson dismissed an employer's attempt to pass about $1.9 million in partial withdrawal liability to the union that walked away. After employees voted to deauthorize the union, the union disclaimed the 21-member bargaining unit mid-contract with no advance notice, Allegion stopped contributing, and the fund assessed liability. Allegion sued the union for breach of contract, indemnification, and unjust enrichment, and lost on all three: a union may validly disclaim representation after a deauthorization election, the bargaining agreement contained no indemnification clause, and the contributions went to the fund, a separate entity. Allegion inherited these agreements when it bought the business from Stanley Black & Decker, and the employer couldn't shift the assessment to the union under these agreements. For buyers inheriting union contracts, that's a reason to examine who bears withdrawal liability before signing. The fund's own collection claim awaits a separate summary judgment ruling.

The question plan sponsors have been asking, answered from the source. Discretionary SECURE and SECURE 2.0 amendments, the features a plan chose to adopt, must be adopted by December 31, 2026, the Notice 2024-2 deadline, now about three and a half months away. Required amendments run on a different clock: generally the end of the second calendar year after the provision lands on the IRS's annual Required Amendments List. Collectively bargained plans, governmental plans and public-school 403(b) plans get later dates. The article also previews what will land on future Required Amendments Lists, including final rules on automatic enrollment, long-term part-time employees and required minimum distributions, each carrying its own two-year amendment window. The task between now and year-end is sorting every adopted feature into the right column.

The follow-up to IFEBP's earlier walk-through of the proposed Trump-account contribution rules, this one on the testing, all of it still proposed. An employer contribution program could not favor highly compensated employees in contributions or benefits, and would need reasonable, objective eligibility classifications. The heart is an average benefits test: the average benefit going to non-highly compensated employees must be at least 55 percent of the average going to the highly compensated, counting only employees who actually receive something and, where benefits run through salary reduction, permitting workers earning under $25,000 to be disregarded. Certain employees, including those under 21 or with less than a year of service, can be left out of the testing populations, and collectively bargained employees may be excludable subject to conditions. Comments are due September 25, a hearing follows October 15, and the proposal would let employers correct specified 2026 testing failures until January 31, 2027.

More than 3,000 pre-1993 Alcoa retirees sued when the company terminated their lifetime retiree healthcare benefits in 2021. On Friday the Seventh Circuit affirmed class certification, holding that the collective bargaining agreements' silence on benefit duration lets the retirees prove vesting through common evidence, but reversed the summary judgment they had won below, rejecting the district court's judicial-estoppel theory and returning the vesting question to the merits. (Blurb corrected 8/17: an earlier version mischaracterized the dispute as a pension-calculation challenge.)

A health plan seeks to recover medical benefits it paid to a union member after he received a worker's compensation settlement for the same injury, and the court grants default judgment in the plan's favor.

Bessemer System Federal Credit Union sued TruStage Financial Group days after a cybersecurity incident forced TruStage, which serves 93% of U.S. credit unions, to shut down its systems and lock members out of 401(k) plans. The suit is an early test of whether institutional clients can hold a vendor liable for cybersecurity failures based on operational disruption alone, without proof that data was actually stolen.

A closer read of the Bessemer FCU filing against TruStage shows the complaint specifically alleges some credit unions temporarily lost employee access to 401(k) and other retirement accounts when TruStage shut its network down after the July 15 breach. A concrete look at how a recordkeeping vendor's outage becomes a retirement-plan access problem for plan sponsors.

Pension fund sues five janitorial service contractors for failing to pay required pension contributions and provide reporting information; court grants motion to dismiss but allows amended complaint.

Effective July 1, 2026, government contractors in Illinois who perform prevailing wage work must afford apprentices fringe benefits. These fringe benefits include pensions, vacations, and training, among other things

Union fund trustees and three affiliated local unions sued Barnhart Crane & Rigging Co. under ERISA and the Labor Management Relations Act.

Iron workers' unions sued a crane company for failing to make required contributions to union trust funds for work performed by its employees, but the court affirmed summary judgment against the unions because they lacked admissible evidence of damages after an expert witness was excluded.