Unification of Workers’ Compensation Insurance
While most people would argue that workers compensation insurance is indeed a necessity for all companies not only in the United States but worldwide, some people think otherwise. It may seem that workers compensation is indeed an all-important part of any corporation's failsafe, should injury arise from any incident within the workplace during legitimate work hours. After all, who would want to face the mess of lawsuits and hefty lawyers’ fees plus the rather large sums of penalty payments erring companies have to pay the government for neglecting to take out the needed workers’ compensation insurance policies that is mandated by every state? It is an enforced insurance for the protection of both sides of the working world, those who own or run these companies and those who work in it.
This system may be viewed as a benefit to workers, but there are those who argue that, in general, yes it is something that is supposed to be beneficial to the masses who make up the present workforce, yet certain unscrupulous and rather cunning corporations have found loopholes in this law to serve their own purposes of cutting back on costs and increasing their own profits. This is due to there not being one universal template for workers’ compensation insurance.
This rather uneven state that the workers’ compensation insurance often makes cost-cutting companies move to certain parts of the country, or the world even, to lower the expenses incurred by the premiums they have to pay insurance companies for these policies. These moves are often fueled by other states in the hope that they can get big conglomerates to invest in their state instead of someplace else. To make this happen, the legislators in these investment hungry areas lower the benefits that each employee is supposed to receive in the event of such accidents happening to them while within the company they work for.
Other companies even go so far as to move certain branches of their operation to other countries that have little or no workers’ compensation laws. Usually, the company units they move to these areas are the ones that carry the most risk to the workers, like the ones that may have to deal with hazardous materials or chemicals. Since a lot of countries are looking for additional sources of employment and taxable businesses, they tend to overlook the enforcement of such benefits for the people who work in these establishments. Most of the time, these corporations put up shop in third world countries or countries with a huge population where unemployment is a big problem.
It has been said that should there be a standard template or pattern enforced by the US government when it comes to workers’ compensation insurance, such problems of under-cutting costs would be avoided and the employees would stand to gain from this, wherever in the country they may be. While arguably, this may benefit the workers that are employed by bigger companies, smaller businesses may complain that their company would suffer the consequences of such a move since they will have to cover the costs of the standard insurance premium despite the fact that they earn way below what these big companies do.
by Maria-Goldsmith 19 years ago