employment
(o)An individual shall be deemed to have “a current connection with the railroad industry” at the time an annuity begins to accrue to him and at death if, in any thirty consecutive calendar months before the month in which an annuity under this subchapter begins to accrue to him, or the month in which he dies if that first occurs, he will have been in service as an employee in not less than twelve calendar months and, if such thirty calendar months do not immediately precede such month, he will not have been engaged in any regular employment other than employment for an employer or employment with the Department of Transportation, the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Surface Transportation Board, the National Mediation Board, the National Transportation Safety Board, the State-owned railroad (as defined in the Alaska Railroad Transfer Act of 1982 [45 U.S.C. 1201et seq.]), so long as it is an instrumentality of the State of Alaska, or the Railroad Retirement Board in the period before such month and after the end of such thirty months. For purposes ofsection 231a(b) of this titleandsection 231a(d) of this titleonly, an individual shall be deemed also to have “a current connection with the railroad industry” if, after having completed twenty-five years of service, such individual involuntarily and without fault ceased rendering service as an employee under this subchapter and did not thereafter decline an offer of employment in the same class or craft as the individual’s most recent employee service. For purposes ofsection 231a(d) of this titleonly, an individual shall be deemed to have a “current connection with the railroad industry” if a pension will have been payable to that individual under the Railroad Retirement Act of 1937 [45 U.S.C. 228aet seq.] or a retirement annuity based on service of not less than 10 years (as computed in awarding the annuity) will have begun to accrue to that individual prior to 1948 under the Railroad Retirement Act of 1937. For the purposes ofsection 231a(d) of this titleonly, an individual shall be deemed also to have a “current connection with the railroad industry” if he will have completed ten years of service and (A) he would be neither fully nor currently insured under the Social Security Act [42 U.S.C. 301et seq.] if his service as an employee after, were included in the term “employment” as defined in that Act, or (B) he has no quarters of coverage under the Social Security Act.
Source
45 USC § 231(o)
Scoping language
For the purposes of this subchapter