Are there any limits that would allow an employer to provide credit to certain employeeds for their prior employment, but not to all employees for their prior employment? This is *not* a situation where the employer is a successor in interest to another employer's plan, but a situation where employees from one company have begun to work for another company. the current employer has alreadsy made one exception to its plan to credit former employees of a different company for time served there, and now newly hired employees from another company would like the plan to treat them similarly, but the employer does not want to.

To legitimize the "exception", the plan must be amended to recognize that employer as a predecessor employer. Any other employees that are hired from that employer in the future will also have be credited with their service under that employer.

The plan sponsor may pick and choose which employers are given predecessor status (so long as it is not a plan takeover situation), but may not pick and choose which employees of that predecessor employer receive the past service credit.

I recommend checking out the 401(a)(4) regs, specifically -11© and (d). There could definitely be problems with selectively granting service with other employers.