Note 11 – Employee Retirement and Benefit Plans

Defined contribution employee savings plans

The Company has a qualified defined contribution employee savings plan for employees (other than those who were acquired though the American Acquisition). The savings plan allows eligible participants to defer, on a pre-tax basis, a portion of their salary and accumulate tax-deferred earnings as a retirement fund. The Company currently matches employee contributions up to a maximum of 4% of participating employees’ gross wages. Company contributions are vested immediately for this plan.

The Company inherited a qualified defined contribution employee savings plan through the American Acquisition for all non-union employees previously employed by American and its subsidiaries. The plan allows eligible participants to defer, within prescribed limits, up to 75% of their income on a pre-tax basis through contributions to the plan.

The Company also inherited a qualified defined contribution employee savings plan through the Merger for all employees previously employed by Sartini Gaming. The savings plan for those former Sartini Gaming employees allows eligible participants to defer, on a pre-tax basis, a portion of their salary and accumulate tax-deferred earnings as a retirement fund. Beginning on August 1, 2015, the Company matched employee contributions for this plan up to a maximum of 1% of participating employees’ gross wages. Company contributions are vested over a five-year schedule.

With respect to the two plans with Company contributions, the Company contributed approximately $0.2 million, $0.3 million and $0.2 million during the years ended December 31, 2017, 2016 and 2015, respectively.

Pension plans

The Company inherited various other employee multiemployer benefit and pension plans through the American Acquisition. As of December 31, 2017, approximately 1,700 of the Company’s employees were members of various unions and covered by union-sponsored, collectively bargained, multiemployer health and welfare and defined benefit pension plans. The Company recorded $2.1 million in expenses for these plans for the year ended December 31, 2017. The Company has no obligation to fund the plans beyond payments made based upon hours worked. The risks of participating in multiemployer plans are different from single-employer plans, including in the following aspects:

•

Assets contributed to multiemployer plans by one employer may be used to provide benefits to employees of other participating employers;

•

If a participating employer stops contributing to a multiemployer plan, the unfunded obligations of the multiemployer plan may be required to be borne by the remaining participating employers; and

•

If an entity chooses to stop participating in some of its multiemployer plans, the entity may be required to pay those plans an amount based on the underfunded status of those plans, referred to as a “withdrawal liability.”

The Company considers the following multiemployer pension plans to be significant:

FIR/RP

Expiration Date

Pension Protection

Status

Of Collective-

Zone Status ⁽¹⁾

Pending/

Surcharge

Bargaining

Multiemployer Pension Plans

EIN/Plan Number

2016

2015

Implemented

Imposed

Agreement

Central Pension Fund of the IUOE and Participating Employers

36-6052390-001

Green

3/31/2018 and

3/31/2020

Southern Nevada Culinary and Bartenders Pension Plan

88-6016617-001

Green

5/31/2018

(1)	The Pension Protection Act of 2006 requires plans that are certified as endangered (yellow) or critical (red) to develop and implement a funding improvement plan.

The Company’s contributions to each multiemployer pension and benefit plans are as follows:

	Year End
(In thousands)	December 31, 2017
Multiemployer pension plans
Operating Engineers Local 501 Security Fund	$	165
Southern Nevada Culinary and Bartenders Pension Plan		453
Other pension plans		45
Total contributions	$	663
Multiemployer benefit plans (excluding pension plans)
HEREIU Welfare Fund	$	1,691
All other		2
Total contributions	$	1,693

For the 2016 plan year, the latest period for which plan data is available, the Company did not make any contributions to the multiemployer pension and benefit plans it inherited from American, as the American Acquisition was not consummated until October 2017.