E. Separation From Employment Explained
If you fail to earn the required number of hours of Pension Credit during the three consecutive years qualifying period for a benefit increase, you will be considered to have a “Separation from Employment” which disqualifies you from receiving any subsequently increased value in your Pension Credits for benefit purposes. If you have a Separation from Employment on or after January 1, 1980, and subsequently retire, your Pension will be based upon the last value of a Pension Credit in effect on the last day of the three-year period that constitutes your Separation from Employment.
To illustrate, assume you experienced a Separation from Employment on December 31, 1979, but did not formally retire until January 1, 1993. Each Future Service Pension Credit you accumulated prior to the date of separation from employment is calculated at $24.00 per credit, the benefit level in effect as of December 31, 1979, even though, at the time of your retirement in 1993, the Plan (for Participants who have earned the required Pension Credit hours) was amended to provide $95.00 per Future Service Pension Credit for service performed since the Plan's inception.
If you have a Separation from Employment and later return to Covered Employment and accrue additional Pension Credit, you will, upon retirement, have the additional Pension Credit multiplied by the applicable amount(s) in Appendix A, but you will not receive any increase in your monthly benefit for any year of Pension Credit earned prior to your Separation from Employment. An exception to this rule occurs if you had incurred a Separation from Employment and subsequently returned to Covered Employment and earned at least 3,000 hours of Pension Credit under the Inside Wiremen Agreement between January 1, 1987 and December 31, 1991. You will have your Pension Credit for the period prior to your separation unfrozen and calculated in accordance with the schedule in Appendix A as though you had never experienced that particular Separation from Employment.
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