[draft] Repeal “Ban Profits on Workers’ Deaths”

[Schutzenphalia and West Ruhntuhnkuhnland]

Ban Profits on Workers' Deaths
A resolution to reduce income inequality and increase basic welfare.

Category: Social Justice
Strength: Mild
Proposed by: Sionis Prioratus

Description: The World Assembly:

AWARE that in countries that allow international corporations, most of the time these corporations act as a force for good, providing employment and economic strength to the communities in which they operate;

FURTHER AWARE that, in order to maximize profits, international corporations may lawfully distribute their corporate subdivisions among many different countries to benefit from a multitude of variations on national subsidies, lower taxes, reduced bureaucratic overload, and so on;

APPALLED that some corporations and other employers can and sometimes do secretly buy life-insurance policies in their employees’ names, designating the corporations themselves as beneficiaries, thus demonstrating to be more interested in their employees’ deaths as a source of revenue than in their actual well-being;

DEPLORING such a practice;

DETERMINED to end it once and for all;

IT IS ESTABLISHED:

1) Defines, for the purpose of this resolution, “Dead peasant policy” as when an employer secretly buys a life-insurance policy in an employee’s name, designating the employer itself as a beneficiary, collecting or expecting to collect benefits after the death of said employee.

2) The employee’s free, fully informed, uncoerced consent shall be required for the validity of any life-insurance wherein her/his employer is a beneficiary. Other beneficiaries of the employee’s own free choosing shall receive at least half the benefits of any life-insurance policy, present or former, in which the employer is or was a beneficiary.

3) To fire, burden, harass, penalize or pressure any employee for not listing her/his employer as a beneficiary of a life-insurance policy is forbidden.

4) Any employees, present or former, targeted by dead peasant policies have the right to have any and all personal documentation pertaining to participation in said policies fully disclosed and may seek and obtain the immediate annulment of such policies without let or hindrance; if an employee is deceased, that employee’s heirs, if any, shall have the aforementioned right in lieu of said employee.

Co-authored by Christian Democrats

Votes For: 9,205
Votes Against: 2,260

Implemented Thu Jan 3 2013

[WAR233 on NS] [WAR233 on NSwiki] [Official Debate Topic]

Argument: The World Assembly,

Firmly urging consideration beyond the politically expedient title and inflammatory language of Resolution #233, “Ban Profits on Workers’ Deaths”,

Perturbed that the designation “dead peasant policy” does not accurately represent the relatively valuable salaried employees for whom corporate owned life insurance will often be necessary,

Expressing extreme reservations about the requirement that at least half of all life insurance policy benefits go to other beneficiaries than the company actually paying the premiums on the policy, given that:


• The value of a policy for a key worker such as a creator of industrial patents, a holder of trade secret protected information, or an innovator in a field of rapid technological development, could vastly exceed that required to support the cost of living for dependents;
  
  
• The loss of such a worker could incur huge costs given the potential loss of proprietary information, experience and expertise, and without recovering the policy the company would not be able to cover these losses, especially in the case of small businesses, companies in expanding markets working on thin margins, and critical fields of development such as pharmaceuticals and communications; and
  
  
• The dependents could reasonably be expected to accept a much lesser payment that would still satisfy their cost of living needs, where the return on such a policy greatly exceeds the worker’s final salary;
Concluding that this prevents key person insurance policies from being effective while neither enhancing workers’ rights nor protecting against corporate abuses,

Repeals World Assembly Resolution #233, “Ban Profits on Workers’ Deaths”.

“This is a modified version of a draft my predecessor presented to this Assembly without much success.

“We are interested in help in making the argument as concise as possible – as this is never a strength, I will admit, of the delegation of Schutzenphalia and West Ruhntuhnkuhnland.”

~ Hanna-Cäcilia von Treibknurfel im Ostruhntuhnkuhnland
First-and-a-Half Deputy Under-Secretary to the Foreign and Colonial Office

[Jebslund]

"Opposed. Life insurance policies do not go to the person paying the premiums anyway. A policy pays out to the beneficiaries. Additionally, the money is not solely for cost of living. Cost of burial, cost of funeral, costs for attendees of said funeral, costs associated the estate of the deceased, execution of the Will of the deceased, and pain and suffering of those close to the deceased all play a part. As to expenses, what of them? Does a terminated or retiring employee owe for the cost of replacing him or her? The costs associated with being in business are for the company to bear, not the family of the deceased."

[OOC: EDIT: Redacted. I get an object lesson in the importance of R'ing TFD, and newbies get an example of why you read all relevant legislation. I misinterpreted and thought that it was meaning companies listing themselves as beneficiaries on personal policies paid for by the company as a benefit, not policies the company itself takes out separate from said policies. My mistake and apologies!]

[Schutzenphalia and West Ruhntuhnkuhnland]

“As to expenses, what of them?”

Hanna-Cäcilia looks confused at this question, re-reading Frau Doktor von Ausserkundszell’s draft and the transcript of her own remarks a couple of times to confirm that, indeed, the word ‘expenses’ never appears.

“A question to which I’m afraid I don’t have the answer.

“As to the litany of costs, even adding them all together is very unlikely to add up to fully 50% of the payout for a COLI policy for a worker who is, for example, the key person in an industrial patent process, so we don’t see citing specific costs a bereaved family might face as a compelling rebuttal.”

[Grays Harbor]

"Opposed. Life insurance policies do not go to the person paying the premiums anyway. A policy pays out to the beneficiaries. Additionally, the money is not solely for cost of living. Cost of burial, cost of funeral, costs for attendees of said funeral, costs associated the estate of the deceased, execution of the Will of the deceased, and pain and suffering of those close to the deceased all play a part. As to expenses, what of them? Does a terminated or retiring employee owe for the cost of replacing him or her? The costs associated with being in business are for the company to bear, not the family of the deceased."

Nobody at any time has ever said "all benefits of all policies go to the company". Yes, a policy pays out to the beneficiaries. That is a given. However, if a company has particularly valued employees, very good in what they do, as well as difficult and expensive to replace, I fail to see the issue with a company taking out a policy on them. There is not, to my knowledge, any limitation on the number of policies a person may have on them. "Nope, there is already a policy on you. No More for You!". There is no prohibition to both a family and a company holding separate policies on the same person. And if a particular worker is that key, valuable, and productive, then what possible harm is there in that company protecting their investment. You yourself do the same with homeowners and automobile insurance coverage. Or life insurance on family members.

"But ... But ... GREEDY EVIL Companies will take out policies then kill their workers for the PROFIT!".

Yeah, that's called "murder", and "fraud".

I was against this resolution from the start, and am still against it. My delegation supports this repeal 100%

[Imperium Anglorum]

I concur with Gruen's proposal. I've not read it, but I've been wanting to repeal this for a long time indeed.

[Bananaistan]

"As always the People's Republic of Bananaistan offers its full support to any effort to repeal the target resolution which unjustly restricts the legitimate and ethical business practice of keyman insurance. When employees of well managed and perfectly viable businesses are left on the dole queue because their employers couldn't insure against the possibility of the untimely deaths of key employees, where will all these wailing bleeding heart dogooders be?"

- Ted