quote:
Wal-Mart loves its employees so much that it takes out life insurance on them.
Work them to death, and then cash in? There has to be a law. 
ed= guess there is a law but they evade it.
'DEAD PEASANT' INSURANCE
Wal-Mart loves its employees so much that it takes out life insurance on them. But this is not an insurance policy that pays death benefits to the family of a deceased employee; instead, it pays the benefit money to Wal-Mart! This policy is called Dead Peasant Insurance This has to be one of the most discusting practices I've heard of. Does anyone have any insight to this practice and why or how can it be allowed? I find this practice to be socially unacceptable and if the law permits such as this, then it's time to change the law! 
Morgan Miller, a Portland IWW organizer wrote about it in the June issue of the Industrial Worker newspaper that just came out. I'll get a digital copy of it (cause I'm too lazy to type it out) and post it.
This is truly repugnant. The corporate guys will look under every rock to make a buck. The Power Source are generating profit even in death.
How many more examples do we need before it becomes clear to even the truest of true believers that corporate values are fundamentally abusive, exploitative and without a shred of respect for human beings?
quote:
Appall-o-Meter
by Dave Mulcahey
Dead Peasants 8.1
Back in 1994, Wal-Mart launched a program promising its employees a $5,000 death benefit. The company was so determined its workers should take advantage of the program that it threatened any who turned it down with the forfeiture of their health insurance. What the company did not tell employees was that it had taken out life insurance policies on them, with Wal-Mart as the beneficiary.
Now lawyers in Texas are mounting a class-action suit against Wal-Mart to reclaim the benefits—as much as $64,000 apiece—for the estates of dead employees. Life insurance policies for employees, sometimes referred to as "dead peasant policies," are not uncommon among large U.S. corporations, who use them as a tax dodge. The policies are legal in many states, but not in Texas. According to the Houston Chronicle, 5 to 6 million corporate serfs have life insurance policies held on them by Fortune 500 magnates, and Wal-Mart holds some 350,000.
Thanks to the sniper-eyed trend watchers at The Wall Street Journal, we now know of something blandly called COLI, corporate-owned life insurance - or, more graphically, ''janitors insurance,'' or, most accurately, ''dead-peasants insurance.''
The practice seems to be widespread, though not widely publicized. It's easy to see why.
For years, companies have insured themselves against the loss of top executives. Thanks to changes in many state laws in the 1980s, companies began to insure everyday employees, the rank and file, the janitors, and - here's the good part - they never told the peasants about it! Indeed, says the Journal, in most companies the existence of the insurance is a closely guarded secret. One company laundered its gains through the executive compensation account so the bookkeepers in accounting wouldn't find out and go blabbing to the other peasants.
The gains in the company's whole-life policies on its workers were tax-free; the company could borrow against the cash value of the policies; and when the worker died, the company - not the worker's survivors - got the tax-free death benefits.
Talk about thinking outside the box; this is thinking outside the coffin.
Since the practice is largely secret, its language tends to be refreshingly free from the usual corporate euphemisms. The Journal says that the printouts that list all the workers covered and for how much are called ''death runs.''
The company would keep paying the premiums, even after a worker quit or was fired or retired. Just so a long-departed worker doesn't slip into the hereafter unnoticed, company emissaries, no doubt out of compassion and concern, regularly troll through Social Security's databases to see who might have died. A worker may die penniless, but somewhere somebody is cashing in on his death.
In Georgia, companies can legally carry dead-peasant insurance on their worker's spouse and children. This is too ghoulish for words because the company's bottom line benefits handsomely if the whole family gets wiped out in a car accident.
COLI - if it's done online, does that make it E. coli, the bacteria that causes fatal food poisoning? - is not some small-time deal. The Journal says some of America's largest and best-known corporations carry the policies and says the Internal Revenue Service is suing 85 of them for $6 billion or more in what the IRS says is illegal deductions for the policies.
Some companies are not totally secretive about the policies. They offer the workers $5,000 to $10,000 in additional life insurance coverage in exchange for letting the company insure them, not bothering to tell the worker the company stands to collect several hundred thousand dollars when the worker stumbles off into that good night.
A bill in Congress would require a company to tell its workers if it has made a bet on their life spans and for how much and with whom. Those little disclosures will certainly brighten employee morale.
According to the Journal, the laws that the insurance industry persuaded the states to change so they could sell COLI were intended to lessen the incentives to profit from someone's death, say by hurrying it along.
Give dead-peasants insurance its due as a public-relations strategy. It has made the executives who took Enron over the cliff look warm and cuddly.
web page
I haven't been able to find a list of which states allow this atrocity to exist!
An employer asks: Do you think 'Janitors Insurance' has affected management push for improved safety programs?
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Richard: Obviously, you have been reading the Wall Street Journal. There has been a recent series of articles on the widespread but little known practice of companies taking out life insurance polices on workers at all levels, including the lower ranks. It offers companies tax-free investment buildup and provides tax-free death benefits when workers, former workers or retirees die.
It was originally designed to insure against the death of key employees, under the rationale that their loss would significantly affect the company. Before the 1980s state insurance laws specified that the person or entity had to have an 'insurable interest' in the individual, but after industry lobbying this restriction was liberalized considerably. Now companies in most states can insure any employee and not even tell the individual.
So we are left with a situation where 'dead peasants' (another name for this insurance) are worth far more dead than alive to companies such as Dow Chemical, American Electric Power, Procter & Gamble, PPG, Olin, Nestle, Wall-Mart [sic], and scores of others. There are various moves afoot by the IRS and congress to crack down on this practice, but back to your question.
I doubt that it has influenced management's support for safety. Injured employees represent a tremendous cost to companies. Companies spend billions on worker compensation, medical and disability costs, not to mention lost productivity. Indeed, these costs are the financial justification for beyond compliance safety and health programs. It is an all or nothing proposition: either you do a stellar job at protecting employees from death, or you risk an even greater cost in the form of injury either on or off the job.
I suppose that if employers had the morals of Attila the Hun and no legal restrictions, they could treat workers like injured horses at the race track and just shoot them to collect. This statement may bring smiles to some (sounds like my company!), but let's face it, management would not even remotely consider putting workers at such lethal risk.
The real concern is the optics. If your company has 'broad-based life insurance' (the technical name), you should openly discuss it with employees to put their concerns or misunderstandings to rest.
what's the difference between taking out insurance on employees and taking out insurance on people who've never had a connection to the company.
Legally, I mean. What's the rationale that makes insuring a clerk who puts in two years Walmart legal, while not allowing Walmart to insure it's customers?
I found that State Representative, Gene Green, introduced legislation April 23, 2002, on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, in support of the Life Insurance Employee Notification Act. I have yet to find a complete list of states in which this is legal and I am searching for a list of businesses which condone this. News articles state that approximately 25% of the Fortune 500 companies take advantage of this policy.
This is a partial list of companies that take advantage of workers by using the dead peasant insurance, also know as broad-based insurance, or corporate-owned life insurance, dead janitor insurance, usually shortened to COLI.
Camelot Music
Procter & Gamble
Winn-Dixie Stores Inc.
American Electric Power
AT&T
Ball
Basset Furniture
Dow Chemical
Eaton
Nestle USA
Olin
Pitney Bowes
PPG Industries
Trans World Entertainment
Walt Disney
Wal-Mart
W.R. Grace & Co.
Advantage Medical Services
Hershey Foods Corp.
Western Resources Inc.
Hillenbrand Industries Inc.
R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co.
Ruddick Corp.
National City Corp.
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In some states, including California, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois and Minnesota, companies are required by law to secure employee consent to include them in coverage. In that case, the employer may offer workers an incentive of a modest amount of life insurance without charge.
*********
Among insurers, Hartford Life is a major COLI provider. At the end of
2001, Hartford Life had janitors insurance with a face value of $4.3 billion in force among its clients, according to its latest annual report. COLI in all its forms brought the company $37 million of its $1 billion of net income last year.
*********
Among the major marketers of COLI are Marsh & McLennan Cos. and
MONY Group Inc.
*********
Trans World "inherited the policies" from CM Holdings. Those policies covered at least 1,400 employees in 1990, based on a company document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The document, called a death run, lists on page after page the names, ages and Social Security
numbers of the workers, as well as how much money the company will
receive for each employee's death, even those who die long after leaving the company. Younger workers will generate from about $400,000 to almost $500,000 in death benefits each, the document shows, while older workers will bring the company about $120,000 to $200,000 each. (Younger workers yield bigger payouts because, based on actuarial calculations, they are less likely to die soon, so the same premium amount buys more coverage for them.)
*********
Death Benefits
How companies profited from the deaths of their employees
Felipe Tillman (music store worker) died of Aids in January of 1992 at the age of 29
William Smith (convenience store clerk) was murdered at his store in December of 1991 at the age of 20.
Doug Sims (distribution center worker) died of a heart attack in December of 1998 at the age of 47.
Peggy Stillwagoner (health-care nurse) died in a traffic accident in October of 1994 at the age of 51.
Death Benefit:
$339,302
$250,000
$64,504
$200,000
Paid to:
* Camelot Music/CM Holdings
* National Convenience Stores
* Wal-Mart Stores
* Advantage Medical Services
These future death benefits become an "attractive off-balance sheet
asset," says Albert "Bud" Schiff, president of the Association for Advanced Life Underwriting and chief executive of NYL Executive Benefits LLC, a leading marketer of COLI for executive benefits in Stamford, Conn. "Companies understand that they have this significant downstream earnings growth."
*********
In 1996, Congress clamped down, forcing companies to begin phasing out
the interest-payment deductions they were taking on COLI loans. And the IRS began working on collecting some of the money the companies had
deducted from their taxes. Some government officials say the sum under
investigation is probably much higher than the $6 billion the IRS confirms, and involves as many as 700 companies.
quote:
What's the rationale that makes insuring a clerk who puts in two years Walmart legal, while not allowing Walmart to insure it's customers?
Is it a legal reason companies don't *dead head* customers or is it they just haven't found a way to get customers to sign on?
The above list didn't mention Enron, looks like they were busy signing up potential deaths for profit too.
After thought. Is it possible that the ever growing *customer card* phenom is an avenue for companies to start cashing in on a customers death?
Seems everyone else has pretty much covered it...anyways here is the article I said I was gonna post...
Die Worker! Die!
In the heyday of robber-baron capitalism a mine owner placed more importance on the life of his work animals than the miners. The reason was simple, it cost money to replace animals, miners were free to be had.
A hundred years later and all around us capitalists tell us how the excesses of the past are gone. Employers now value their "most valuable resource," their employees. IWWs know it's all a line of b.s., but a lot of our coworkers don't.
So along comes an expose which shows the capitalist for the parasites they are. The latest scam is called Corporate-Owned Life Insurance, or what Winn-Dixie Grocery accountants called "dead peasant" insurance.
COLIs are a method in which a company gambles on their lowest-paid employees' life expectancy. Life insurance is taken out on workers for amounts ranging from $60,000 to $368,000. When the "peasant" dies money is shuffled into company coffers to benefit executives and high-level managers.
The benefts, both to the company and the execs. are tax-free.
One example: a musician worked at a music store for a couple of months. He later died and the company benefited $339,302, of which $168,875 was spent on executive benefits. Of course, the deceased - the valuable employees - and their families get little or nothing from the policies. In fact, often employee spouses and even children have COLIs taken out on them.
According to the Houston Chronicle, "This approach is used... to reward top executives with more than their 401 (k) and the traditional defined pensions that are allowed by pension laws, which cap how much the company can contribute to the benefits."
For years it was illegal for companies to take COLIs out on average employees because it could discourage companies making their workplaces safe. And possible cases of this type of corporate murder are turning up. In Texas, the National Convenience Store chain took out policies of $250,000 on their peasants. So while a similar-sized competitor upgraded employee safety by installing bullet proof glass and bringing staff leels up to two workers at night, NCS did nothing. The competitor had one staff murder death in a five-year period. NCS had nine staff murder deaths in the same period, making a cool tax-free $2.25 million for management's retirement funds.
Its some system!
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For years it was illegal for companies to take COLIs out on average employees
Might be good to look at when/how/why this changed? 
well i guess maybe we should talk a little more about this topic again.
walt disney has this insurance out on their employees , supposedly, and this is not a joke.
on the news , i guess there collecting on mickey mouse right now who just got ran over by a float going to a parade., and yes he's dead.
gee theres sure been alot of accidents there last year..scarey shit hay..
NOT MEANT TO BE A JOKE
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Cable television giant Comcast Corp. made a surprise bid for The Walt Disney Co. Tuesday that would create the world's biggest media conglomerate and likely spell an end to the 20-year career of Disney chief Michael Eisner.
Comcast is trying to buy up disney, should they be successful, will comcast become the policy holders of the dead peasant insurance? Does dead peasant insurance increase a company's value, is it an asset?
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Does dead peasant insurance increase a company's value, is it an asset?
I would say yes they are definitely an asset, but according to Albert Schiff, they are an off-balance sheet asset!
quote:
These future death benefits become an "attractive off-balance sheet asset," says Albert "Bud" Schiff, president of the Association for Advanced Life Underwriting and chief executive of NYL Executive Benefits LLC, a leading marketer of COLI for executive benefits in Stamford, Conn. "Companies understand that they have this significant downstream earnings growth."