An issue came up recently concerning the eligibility for benefits of an employee working at two separate Archdiocesan corporations. The employee was working at the Roman Catholic Seminary of San Francisco (Seminary Corp.) for 19 hours a week, who then began working in Archbishop Quinn’s Office, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco (Corp Sole) for eight hours, thereby working a total of 27 hours per week. The question was whether this dual employment (similar to splitting time between the RCWC and the RCA) should result in coverage for Archdiocesan benefits applicable to regular employees working at least 20 hours per week.
In accordance with our policy, employees who work 20 hours or more per week for the “Archdiocese” are eligible and must be offered the Archdiocesan benefits. In consultation with our plan administrators, the fact that a person works for two Archdiocesan corporations does not preclude them from being offered the Archdiocesan benefits package, particularly where (unlike CYO and Catholic Charities, which are unique public benefit corporations rather than religious corporations) the benefits offered are identical.
Thus whether to include these persons is essentially a policy decision. Benefited employees in the RCA, RCWC and Seminary corporations are offered the same benefit plans, i.e. health, pension, SDI/SUI, TSA, LTD, etc. Indeed the “multi-employer” pension plan makes specific reference to each of these corporations. We have checked with Jack Hammel and he concurs that the separate payroll I.D. numbers of these two entities are not necessarily an issue, since parishes and schools (the latter owned by the RCWC) prior to coordinated payroll, all had separate I.D. numbers and we used cumulative hours for benefits.
Therefore, based on the custom relative to RCA/RCWC employees, it seems logical to extend to Seminary employees the same benefits if they cumulatively work 20 or more hours per week with RCA and/or RCWC corporations which provide an identical Archdiocesan package.
Please advise if you concur with this policy recommendation as soon as possible so that we can advise the Seminary accordingly.
