Souza

MEMORANDUM OPINION

Plaintiff Souza challenges the pension plan requirements of the Trustees of the Western Conference of Teamsters Pension Trust. The terms of the plan require that before an employee is eligible for vested retirement benefits he must have worked a minimum of 15 years of service, and a minimum of 3,000 Covered Hours, 1 ***and must have attained a requisite age 2 before a break in service. *656 If an employee has fulfilled these requirements, his pension rights will vest and he will be eligible to receive pension payments at age 60. Plaintiff in fact has worked well over the required number of years and hours. He has worked at least 22,848 Covered Hours and more than 22 years of unbroken service. However, plaintiff was denied any benefits under the pension plan because he had a break in service at age 48 at a time when the terms of the plan defined age 52 as the requisite age for eligibility. In this action, he is challenging the application of the “age-at-break-in-serviee” requirement to persons who have met the other requirements of the plan. Plaintiff claims the age requirement is arbitrary and unreasonable, and thus in violation of Section 302(c) (5) of the…