Workers' Pension Protection Act of 1996

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Title I: Pension Plan Funding

Title II: Actuarial Assumptions

Title III: Administration and Enforcement

Title IV: Miscellaneous Provisions

Workers' Pension Protection Act of 1996 - Amends the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) to revise protections for workers in multiemployer pension plans. Extends certain protections previously established for workers in single-employer pension plans to workers in multiemployer pension plans.

Title I: Pension Plan Funding - Amends the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) to prohibit multiemployer pension plan trustees from increasing benefits unless the plan is operating with at least 95 percent funding. Allows a plan that satisfies such requirement to choose to increase benefits if the benefit increase would not reduce the funding levels to below 90 percent. Requires such a plan to reach 95 percent funding again before increasing benefits.

Requires multiemployer plans to use specified interest rate assumptions and mortality tables.

Modifies a rule which prohibits decrease of accrued benefits to make an exception for plan amendments which reduce an increase resulting from an increase in benefits prohibited under this title.

Requires multiemployer plan administrators to notify plan participants, beneficiaries, and contributing employers of the plan's funding status and the limits of the guarantee by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) if the plan becomes insolvent.

Title II: Actuarial Assumptions - Requires multiemployer plans to adopt the interest rate and mortality tables of title I.

Title III: Administration and Enforcement - Grants employers that contribute to multiemployer plans the right to seek an injunction against a plan to prevent an impermissible benefit increase or any other violation of title I or II of this Act, or obtain other appropriate relief to redress such violations or enforce such provisions.

Authorizes a court, in its discretion, to award reasonable attorney's fees and costs to either party in such actions.

Title IV: Miscellaneous Provisions - Eliminates a special vesting rule for multiemployer plans. Conforms vesting rules for multiemployer plans to those applicable to other qualified (single- employer) plans (thus requiring that a worker's accrued benefits be 100-percent vested after five years of service rather than the current ten years).