PMA pension and 401(k): how a year of credit actually counts

Most PMA workers know there's a pension. Far fewer can tell you what a year of credit actually is, what kicks the 401(k) employer contribution on, and (the one that bites guys at the end of the year) which hours don't count toward any of it.

Three documents drive this: the 2022–2028 PCLCD, the MOU that sits on top of it, and the underlying Plan SPDs (2014 for the Pension Plan, 2019 for the 401(k) Plan). When the MOU updates a number, the MOU wins. The older SPD language stays useful for mechanics, but specific dollar figures and thresholds get refreshed by the current contract.

Here's the actual mechanics, pulled from those documents.

A year of credited service: full, fractional, no credit

The Pension Plan measures service in a Payroll Year by Qualifying Hours. The cliffs:

Qualifying Hours in the Payroll Year	Credit
1,300 or more	Full year of service
800 to 1,299	Fractional year
Under 800	No credit

Source: ILWU-PMA Pension Plan SPD (2014), Year of Service section.

A full year of service buys you a full year's accrual at the benefit rate. A fractional year buys you a pro-rated piece of that same accrual. It's not zero, but it's not a full year either. Under 800, the Payroll Year is a hole in your record for that year. No service, no accrual.

That distinction matters more than guys realize, because the eligibility ladder below is mostly written in years of service, not hours. Two fractional years are not one full year for eligibility purposes. They're two fractional years.

There is one exception worth knowing: an Age 60+ Bump can credit up to 100 additional hours to bring a Payroll Year up to 1,300 (Pension Plan SPD §I.C, plus Low Work Opportunity Port special provisions). If you're 60+ and you finish a year between 1,200 and 1,299, ask the Plan office whether the bump applies to you.

The eligibility ladder: when can you actually draw

The Plan doesn't have one retirement age. It has a stack of doors that open at different combinations of age and service. Roughly in the order they open:

• Vested at 5 years of service (Pension Plan SPD §I.H). Vesting just means the service you've earned is yours. You can leave the industry and still collect a deferred pension later. It is not "you can start drawing now."
• Disability retirement at 10+ years of service (§I.3, as modified by MOU §II.3, which reduced the threshold from 13 to 10). Specific disability standards apply.
• Early Incentive Window at age 59½ with 10+ years of service (§I.5, as opened by the MOU §II.5 Limited Early Retirement Incentive Window, effective January 1, 2024 through June 30, 2027). The window waives actuarial reductions for eligible participants. Time-limited. Check whether it's still open when you read this.
• Reduced Early Retirement at age 55 to 61 with 13+ years of service (§I.A.3). Benefit is reduced for retiring before normal age. The reduction is actuarial. Don't guess it; have the Plan office run your number.
• Unreduced Early Retirement at age 62 to 64 with 13+ years of service (§I.A.2). No reduction.
• Normal Retirement at age 65+ (§I.A.1). The unqualified default door.
• Bridge Benefit at 25+ years of service (§I.5). A separate top-up paid only between your retirement date and Social Security eligibility, designed to bridge the gap. Continues to require at least 25 pension-qualifying years per the current Plan documents.

Two notes. First: section references are from the 2014 SPD; the MOU modifies several of these numbers (notably the disability threshold). When the MOU and the SPD disagree, the MOU wins. Second: the Plan office is the only body that can tell you which door is actually open for you on a given date. The ladder above is the map, not the ticket.

The 401(k): different plan, different rules, same hours problem

The ILWU-PMA Savings (401(k)) Plan is a separate plan from the Pension Plan, with its own SPD (2019). The employee side is standard 401(k) mechanics: pre-tax or Roth deferrals, IRS annual limits, age-50 catch-up. The part most guys don't pay close enough attention to is the employer Nonelective Contribution, and specifically the qualifying-year gate in front of it.

The qualifying-year mechanic

To get the employer contribution in a Plan Year (Plan Year runs July 1 to June 30), you have to have qualified for a year of service under the Pension Plan during the Payroll Year that ended before the Plan Year started (401(k) SPD §11).

In plain English: this year's 401(k) employer contributions depend on last year's pension hours. Miss the threshold last year, no employer contribution this year. Hit it last year, the contributions flow this year on every Qualified Hour you work, up to the annual max.

Reading the 401(k) SPD §11 language against the Pension SPD §I.C, the threshold is 1,300+ hours in the prior Payroll Year (a full pension Year of Service). A fractional pension year (800 to 1,299 hours) is not the same thing as a qualifying Year of Service for 401(k) purposes. If you finish the prior Payroll Year under 1,300, the current Plan Year has no employer contribution flowing into your 401(k).

Hours that count toward Qualified Hours

The 401(k) SPD (§7) is explicit:

Counts:

• All hours paid by participating employers under the CBA
• Hours for which vacation pay or holiday pay is received

Does NOT count:

• PGP (Pay Guarantee Plan) pay
• Disability pay
• Employer contributions to the Pension or Welfare Plans

This is the surprise. A worker who leaned on PGP through a slow year, or who took disability pay during an injury, can hit December feeling like they put in a year, look at the qualifying-hour number, and realize PGP and disability didn't move it. Vacation and holiday do. PGP and disability don't.

If you're near the threshold and you have any choice in the matter, the hours that count are worked hours, vacation hours, and holiday hours. Plan accordingly.

The employer contribution itself

The employer Nonelective Contribution is paid at a $/hr rate per Qualified Hour, up to an annual hours cap and an annual dollar maximum (401(k) SPD §11). The rate and the cap differ by role. Longshore Worker / Marine Clerk is one schedule, Walking Boss / Foreman is a different (higher) schedule, Watchmen are on their own schedule.

The specific $/hr and the annual maximum are the kinds of numbers the MOU refreshes. Rather than print a figure that goes stale, use the current MOU rate and your role's hours cap to do the math. The DockBook PMA Pension & 401(k) sheet does this for you using whatever rate the contract has set for your role.

One mechanical detail worth knowing: third-shift hours are converted for Nonelective purposes only. 5 hours of third-shift work counts as 8 hours for the employer contribution calculation (401(k) SPD §11(e), effective July 1, 2008). The extra hours don't count for any other benefit, just this one.

Manual prior years for pre-DockBook history

DockBook tracks your years from the date you started logging shifts. For everything before that, the PMA Pension & 401(k) sheet lets you manually enter prior years: hours worked per year, marked as full / fractional / no credit. Those manual entries fold into the years-of-service total used by the eligibility ladder.

This matters because most of the doors in the ladder are written in years, not hours, and 5, 10, 13, 25 are the numbers that matter. If you started using DockBook with 8 years already on the clock, entering those 8 years is the difference between the app showing you 2 years of service and showing you 10.

Manual years override logged years for the same Payroll Year. Use them for backfill, not for second-guessing this year's hours.

Closing

The Pension Plan counts almost every paid hour you put in. The 401(k) employer contribution is pickier. It wants worked, vacation, and holiday hours, in a Payroll Year where you cleared the pension qualifying threshold. PGP and disability pay help your paycheck. They don't help this.

The numbers are knowable. The thresholds are written down. The only question is whether you're tracking your own hours against them in real time, or finding out in July that last year's Payroll Year came up short.

If you want this calculated automatically off your logged shifts (full / fractional / no credit per year, the eligibility ladder lit up against your real numbers, and a separate view for the 401(k) qualifying gate), that's what the PMA Pension & 401(k) sheet in DockBook does. Manual prior years included. More on DockBook for PMA.

Caveats

This is a plain-English explainer based on the ILWU-PMA Pension Plan SPD (2014), the ILWU-PMA Savings (401(k)) Plan SPD (2019), and the modifications introduced by the 2022–2028 PCLCD and its MOU. Authority order: MOU > PCLCD > PCCCD > SPDs. Where the 2014 Pension SPD has been superseded by the MOU on a specific number, the MOU governs.

It is not a legal document, not financial advice, and not a substitute for the actual Plan text or a conversation with the ILWU-PMA Benefit Plans Office. Specific dollar figures (the 401(k) $/hr rate, the annual max, the qualifying-hour threshold) get updated by the trustees and by MOU side letters between contract cycles. Verify the current numbers with the Plan office before making a retirement or contribution decision.

If you spot something out of date or wrong, email me.