Opinion ID: 736908
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Effect on Benefits and Administration

Text: 34 As stated earlier, the district court ruled that ERISA preempts the prevailing wage law based on our holding in GE I. In response to the State's arguments that it had modified the enforcement policy under scrutiny in GE I, the district court stated that the GE I court was not concerned with the details of the State's policy and did not explicitly consider the use of the line-item approach. 914 F.Supp. at 936. But in GE I, we set forth a detailed version of what is now the first part of the Travelers test. We said that a state law purports to regulate, directly or indirectly, the terms and conditions of employee benefit plans whenever it prescribes either the type and amount of an employer's contributions to a plan, the rules and regulations under which the plan operates, or the nature and amount of the benefits provided thereunder. GE I, 891 F.2d at 29 (internal citations omitted). Applying that test, we found that DOL's then-current enforcement approach intruded upon all three of these preempted areas. Id. at 29-30. However, we think a different conclusion would result under the State's total package approach, which it claims to be benefit neutral. 35 The State claims that under its new approach, an employer need not establish or contribute to any particular type of pension or welfare plan in any particular amount. According to the affidavit submitted to the district court by DOL's attorney, an employer may provide supplemental benefits in any form or combination so long as the sum total is not less than locally prevailing benefits. Burgio's total liability would thus be the same whether the subcontractor had bargained to provide benefits exclusively through ERISA plans, exclusively through non-ERISA plans, through additional cash wages, or through some combination of the three. Where a legal requirement may be easily satisfied through means unconnected to ERISA plans, and only relates to ERISA plans at the election of an employer, it 'affect[s] employee benefit plans in too tenuous, remote, or peripheral a manner to warrant a finding that the law 'relates to' the plan.' Shaw, 463 U.S. at 100 n. 21, 103 S.Ct. at 2901 n. 21. Keystone Chapter, Assoc. Builders and Contractors, Inc. v. Foley, 37 F.3d 945, 960 (3d Cir.1994), cert. denied, 514 U.S. 1032, 115 S.Ct. 1393, 131 L.Ed.2d 244 (1995). Under such an enforcement scheme, it is no longer true that under section 220, 'the Commissioner of Labor, not the contractor, determine[s] the supplements to be provided.'  GE I, 891 F.2d at 28 (quoting A.L. Blades, 136 A.D.2d at 927, 524 N.Y.S.2d 912). 36 The State further argues that the law does not in any way affect the administration or regulation of ERISA benefit plans. While a contractor or subcontractor must produce records showing that it has paid the prevailing wage rates and paid or provided supplements, it need not maintain such records in any particular form. See N.Y.Lab. Law § 220(3-a)(a). We think preemption does not occur where a state law places on ERISA plans administrative requirements so slight that the law creates no impediment to an employer's adoption of a uniform benefit administration scheme. Fort Halifax Packing Co., Inc. v. Coyne, 482 U.S. 1, 14, 107 S.Ct. 2211, 2219, 96 L.Ed.2d 1 (1987). In sum, if the State's factual contentions are correct, as we must assume in reviewing this award of summary judgment to Burgio, the State's total package approach avoids those conflicting directives which we found required preemption in GE I. 37 The district court buttressed its contrary conclusion with an analysis of this court's decision in GE II, 936 F.2d at 1460-61, where following the remand in GE I we upheld against an ERISA preemption challenge the application of Labor Law § 220 to enforce non-ERISA benefits such as vacation and holiday pay. But in that case, we were not presented with, and thus did not decide, whether a total package enforcement policy of the prevailing wage law would be preempted by ERISA. 38 We recognize that Burgio argues that the State's enforcement approach had not changed fundamentally when it made its claim against Burgio here. It is for that reason, as already indicated, that we remand to the district court to determine whether DOL did actually employ its new approach here.