Background
The Boilermaker-Blacksmith National Pension Trust sought withdrawal assessments from General Electric under the Multiemployer Pension Plan Amendments Act. An arbitrator found GE qualified for an exemption because its employees worked in the building and construction industry. The district court upheld the arbitrator’s decision, and the Fund appealed.
The court’s reasoning
The court found the statute ambiguous regarding how to count employees to determine if substantially all work in the building and construction industry. It concluded that the cumulative headcount method better aligns with the MPPAA’s purpose of protecting plan solvency and accounts for the intermittent nature of construction employment. The monthly headcount method was rejected as largely a creature of the collective bargaining agreement rather than statutory intent.
We conclude that, of the two options, the cumulative headcount method is more consistent with the purpose of the statute and hews more closely to congressional intent.
General Electric Company v. Boilermaker-Blacksmith National Pension Trust, 25-1442 (8th Cir. May 26, 2026)
What it means going forward
Employers in the building and construction industry may now rely on a cumulative headcount method to claim exemptions from withdrawal liability, even if monthly fluctuations in workforce composition would otherwise disqualify them.