Corporate Solutions to Corporate Problems
In an article that appeared in the June 23, 2014 New York Times by David Gelles titled, “An Employee Dies, and the Company Collects the Insurance,”
“Employees at The Orange County Register received an unsettling email from corporate headquarters this year. The owner of the newspaper, Freedom Communications, was writing to request workers’ consent to take out life insurance policies on them. But the beneficiary of each policy would not be the survivors or estate of the insured employee, but the Freedom Communications pension plan.”
This insurance swindle has taken hold throughout the corporate world. In fact, according to same the article,
“Bank of America’s policies have a cash surrender value of at least $17.6 billion. If Wells Fargo had to redeem its policies tomorrow, it would reap at least $12.7 billion. JPMorgan Chase would collect at least $5 billion...”
In another article appearing in the Times the same day by Hilary Stout, Bill Vlasic, Danielle Ivory and Rebecca R. Ruiz titled, “G.M. Prepares to Count Cost of Suffering,” the authors explain that after years of inaction to address the problem of a defective ignition switch in Cobalts and several other models of General Motors cars, GM will have to,
“…deal with hundreds of injury claims that the company has refused to discuss or characterize. Some experts predict the cost to the company could run into the billions of dollars, exceeding the payouts related to deaths linked to the defect.”
Poor GM. Maybe they could take out life insurance policies on all of their employees and then give each one of them a brand new Cobalt!