Flanagan

Former participants in a multiemployer, collectively-bargained pension plan brought this action under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), 29 U.S.C.A. §§ 1001-1461 (West 1985 & Supp.1993), seeking injunctive and monetary relief against the plan and its trustees. The plaintiffs contend that the plan denied them vested benefits and that the plan’s trustees breached fiduciary duties. The district court granted the defendants summary judgment. We reverse and remand.

I

John Flanagan and Joseph Missett were employed in the construction of nuclear power facilities at Hanford, Washington. When work on those facilities slowed dramatically, the two men lost their jobs in 1983. Flanagan and Missett, each four-year veterans of the project, had been accruing benefits as participants under the Inland Empire Electrical Workers Pension Plan and Trust (the Plan). However, each fell short of the Plan’s five-to-ten year service term required in order for accrued benefits to become nonfor-feitable; that is, for those benefits to vest.

The Plan, in compliance with federal law, allowed the men four years, their length of service prior to layoff, in which to resume covered employment…