Qualifying For Railroad Retirement Disability
By Jessica M. Friedman of Friedman Law Firm, P.C.
Friday, October 28, 2022
Railroad Retirement
Have you or someone you know worked on the railroads and suffered a disability that prevented future employment? You may qualify for a railroad retirement disability annuity. Railroad Retirement Disability provides benefits and Medicare programs comparable to Social Security disability.
Tier I & Tier 2
Railroad Retirement benefits are separated into two tiers. Tier I is the amount you would get from Social Security Disability. Tier II is an additional disability benefit similar to a pension plan. Tier II benefits are based on the employee’s salary and years of service.
Tier II benefits are calculated as:
(employee’s highest earnings over 60 months x number of years of service) x 0.007
Railroad Retirement Disability Eligibility
There are two types of RR Retirement Disability:
TOTAL DISABILITY ANNUITY — To qualify, you cannot be able to work in any capacity and must have a minimum of 10 years of railroad service. You may qualify if you have five to nine years of experience that occurred after 1995 and you meet the earnings requirements for Social Security.
OCCUPATIONAL DISABILITY ANNUITY — To qualify, you must be disabled from performing your own regular railroad occupation. There is no age requirement for this annuity as long as you have 20 years of creditable railroad service. Otherwise, you must be at least 60 years old and have ten years of railroad service.
The main difference between the two is that with Total Disability Annuity, you must prove you are unable to work in any field. For Occupational Disability, you only need to prove you can no longer perform your current railroad occupation.
How much does Railroad Retirement Disability pay?
According to the Railroad Retirement Board (RRB), “The average age annuity being paid by the Railroad Retirement Board (RRB) at the end of fiscal year 2021 to career rail employees was $3,815 a month, and for all retired rail employees the average was $3,045. The average age retirement benefit paid under social security was approximately $1,550 a month.”
I’ve Been Denied by the RRB. Now What?
If you have been denied Railroad Retirement Disability, you have the right to appeal through a “three-stage” appeals process:
You may request a reconsideration.
If denied again, you may appeal to the Bureau of Hearings and Appeals. You have the right to a hearing. If the hearing is in-person, it will likely be at the RRB office closest to your home. In some cases, video conferencing or phone hearings are an option.
If you are unsatisfied with the decision made by the Bureau of Hearings and Appeals, you may then appeal to a three-member Board. This three-member board typically does not accept additional evidence or conduct a hearing.
Most hearings are over an hour and consist of the Hearing Officer asking questions. Afterward, your lawyer may ask follow-up questions. After you provide testimony, the next witness is typically a vocational expert (VE) who testifies about what jobs you could do based on various assumptions established in the hearing. This testimony can include intangibles, like your ability to concentrate and focus during an eight-hour workday or your ability to adapt to new workplaces.
Friedman Law Firm can help you at any stage of your claim, beginning with filing the initial application. The advantage to retaining representation is that we can guide and advise you regarding which information is most important to your case. Often it is difficult to know which information is important and which is not. Our goal is to help you obtain benefits based on the initial application in order to avoid a lengthy appeals process.
If you have questions about the above information or need representation for your case, reach out to us to schedule a free consultation. You can call us at 800-728-0434, or message us through our Contact page.