员工福利与公共政策【外文翻译】

1、外文文献翻译译文原文：Employee Benefits and Public PolicyRichard W. HumphreysINTRODUCTIONAn important issue in the field of employee responsibilities and rights is whether these matters are best dealt with by national policy (as in the cases of collective bargaining and social security), subnational determinat

2、ion (as in the cases of private health care insurance and pensions), or a combination of the two. In the United States, the variety of public and private approaches to arrangements for employee responsibilities and rights calls for their careful scrutiny to determine if the resulting "system&qu

3、ot; is (1) adequate for conserving human resources in an economic sense and (2) equitable in terms of sharing in the returns to production.The thesis of this article is that national goals regarding privately sponsored retirement and group insurance programs have not been met and are not likely to b

4、e met with the institutional apparatus currently in use. It is suggested that when revenue legislation, regulatory legislation, and minimum standardslegislation is considered, the inescapable conclusion is that universal provision of employment-based retirement and group insurance benefits is a nati

5、onal goal. An obvious measure of the failure to attain this goal is the number of members of the labor force who are not covered by privately sponsored retirement and group insurance benefits, after three-quarters of a century of legislative encouragement. A less obvious but nonetheless equally info

6、rming measure is the extent to which members of the labor force who are covered by privately sponsored benefit programs are exposed to the loss and/or reduction of and termination of those benefits throughout their working careers.This examination of national employee benefits goals is occasioned by

7、 the evidence that our capacity to achieve further private sector benefits coverage through tax expenditures and regulatory legislation has been exhausted, by the evidence that virtually all of labor force growth will occur in sectors that rarely sponsor employee benefit programs, and by the growing

8、 recognition that there is an approaching crisis with respect to the financing of privately sponsored health care benefits.OVERVIEWEmployee benefits account for a substantial and growing portion of compensation. Depending on what is counted and how it is counted they range in value from approximatel

9、y one-fifth to two-fifths of compensation. The most recent figures available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (Bureau of National Affairs, 1989) indicate that benefits account for 27.3% of total compensation for all workers in private industry. This figure varies depending upon which industrial s

10、ector is under consideration, and upon occupation, location, and union status.Benefits for workers in goods-producing industries accounted for 30.8% of compensation, with the figure for service workers equaling 23.2%. While compensation costs for white-collar workers exceeded the cost for blue-colla

11、r Workers, benefits for the latter (30.9% of compensation) accounted for a larger portion of compensation than for the former (25.8% of compensation). Benefits for workers located in the Northeast, as well as total earnings, were the highest, while those in the South were the lowest. Benefits for un

12、ion workers accounted for 33.6% of compensation in contrast with 25.6% for nonunion workers.The Bureau of Labor Statistics calculations encompass paid nonworking time, premium pay, group insurance, retirement and savings plans, and legally required benefits. Some calculations exclude legally require

13、d benefits. When this is done, benefits as a portion of compensation account for approximately one-fifth of the total. Then, too, the Bureau calculates benefits as a portion of total compensation where direct compensation is equated with hours paid rather than hours worked. If benefits are expressed

14、as the difference between total compensation and compensation for hours worked, then benefits as a portion of compensation rise to approximately two-fifths of the total. The latter procedure serves as the relatively common basis for determining the cost of benefits at the bargaining table.Regardless

15、 of how the portion of compensation accounted for by benefits is determined it is the portion accounted for by group insurance, including health care insurance and retirement plans, that is the focus here. This is the case because it is the risk-sharing and deferred income programs constituting the

16、elements of indirect compensation that are the subject of public policy from the perspective of both federally authorized tax expenditures and federal regulation. There are, for instance, no federal regulations governing paid nonworking time and there is no tax expenditure. Compensation for paid vac

17、ations, paid holidays, and paid rest periods appearsin the pay check and it is subject to current taxation. This is also true of various forms of penalty and premium pay such as reporting pay, call-back pay, call-in pay, overtime pay, pay for holidays worked, and shift differential.Compensation for

18、these purposes also appears in the pay check, is subject to current taxation, and is not subject to federal regulation with the possible exception that under the Fair Labor StandardsAct nonexempt employees must be paid one-and-one-half times their normal rate of pay when they work over 40 hours per

19、week.In contrast with the benefits that are incorporated as a portion of direct compensation there is, for benefits taking the form of indirect compensation, a substantial federal presence in the form of tax expenditures and regulation. The magnitude of this presence is emphasized by a Congressional

20、 Budget Office finding that the tax expenditure for private pensions was $60 billion in 1988 and represented the single largest tax avoidance item in the individual income tax structure (Mitchell, 1985). According to Representative Dan Rostenkowski there is an additional tax expenditure for health c

21、are benefits ranging between $30 and $40 billion (Pension World, July 1989).A $100-billion-dollar annual tax expenditure constitutes clear and convincing evidence of Congressional support for employment-based retirement and health care benefits. This is not a policy of recent origin. Tax expenditure

22、s in support of private pensions date back to passageof the Federal Income Tax Act in 1913. Under the provisions of that legislation, employers could treat pension liabilities accruing in the current tax year as an ordinary business expense. However, the income from pension trusts was subject to tax

23、ation and employees were taxed during their active service on the amount contributed for their benefit and during their retired years on pension payments. There was no tax exemption for employer payments to fund past service benefits.Under these provisions employees were taxed on employer contributi

24、ons for benefits they might never receive and employers were allowed to deduct contributions from gross income while remaining free to amend or terminate the plan at any time and divert the funds for other-i.e., nonbenefit-uses.PROBLEMS WITH OUR PRIV ATE BENEFIT SYSTEM IN TERMS OF MEETING THE NEED T

25、O INSURE RISKSIt is a unique feature of our private benefit system that only those who voluntarily sponsor employee benefit programs are subject to regulation. Employers who fail to do so are not concerned about the plethora of regulatory legislation that has sprung out of Congressional attempts to

26、prevent distortion of public policy. If you do not sponsor a welfare plan you do not have to concern yourself with satisfying Section 89 (Internal Revenue Code) nondiscrimination rules. If you do not sponsor health insurance you do not need to tell terminating employees that they are entitled to pur

27、chase coverage for 18 months at 102% of the sponsor's cost for such coverage. If you do not sponsor a defined benefit pension you do not have to worry about maintaining your funding standard account, you do not have to pay a premium ranging from $16 to $50 per employee to the Pension Benefit Gua

28、rantee Corporation, and you do not have to worry about exposing your firm to a liability equal to 30% of net worth in the event of plan termination. While these regulations are presumably required, there are many benefits administrators who argue that they discourage the behavior public policy inten

29、ds to encourage.The content of our revenue and regulatory legislation also calls attention to another unique feature of our private benefit system. It emphasizes the fact that you must be an employee of a firm that sponsors a retirement program and a group insurance program. When employment is inter

30、rupted or a plan is terminated, coverage is interrupted.In the case of pensions this characteristic is of profound significance because attainment of adequate retirement income is contingent upon continuity of coverage. It takes a lifetime of covered employment to earn a benefit replacing a reasonab

31、le portion of preretirement income. To illustrate, given a formula that provides for a benefit equal to 1.5% of the highest three out of the last five years of earnings (preceding retirement) times years of service, it would take almost 45 years of uninterrupted employment to replace two-thirds of p

32、reretirement income and thirty-three-and-one-third years to achieve a 50% replacement ratio. It is not necessary to know how many or how few workers have such employment histories to recognize that a system that is characterized by such a requirement is a system that compromises the future of all pa

33、rticipants at its worst and impedes the attainment of efficient labor markets at its best.It could be argued that the need for uninterrupted coverage over an extended period of time has been addressedby the most recently adopted minimum vesting standards. Under ERISA's original provisions, plans

34、 were permitted to adopt one of three vesting standards, viz., full vesting after 10 years of service (the so-called "cliff vesting" arrangement), graded vesting beginning at 25% after 5 years of service with the rate increasing 5% annually during the next five years and 10% for each year

35、thereafter, and vesting that takes both age and service into consideration. Under the latter provision, employees whose age and service add up to 45 must be 50% vested. Beginning in 1989 only two vesting standards will be available. Cliff vesting remains an option with the length of service to achie

36、ve 100% vesting reduced from 10 years to 5 years. Graded vesting also remains an option with the rate of vesting accelerated (20% after three years of service increasing by 20% each year thereafter until 100% is attained after seven years of coverage). The "rule of 45" alternative is no lo

37、nger permitted.While it is true that employees who terminate after having met the length-of-service requirement of one or the other of the minimum vesting standards will retain title to all or a portion of the benefits they have earned, it remains true that employees who terminate before completing

38、their fifth or third year of employment will forfeit their benefit entitlement. Those years, then, are permanently eliminated from their future benefit calculations. There is, therefore, in spite of the improvement in minimum vesting standards, the possibility, if not the probability, that significa

39、nt numbers of employees covered by private pensions will fail to meet the eligibility tests, particularly during their younger employed years when turnover rates are apt to be high. Even those who terminate after having met the minimum vesting standards are not "made whole." When an employ

40、ee terminates employment with vested benefits, the benefits are frozen at the level effective as of the date of termination. When that employee reaches his or her normal retirement age he or she will become entitled to the benefit payable when termination occurred, not when retirement occurs. Even g

41、iven a modest rate of inflation, the purchasing power of that vested benefit will have been seriously eroded. For an employee who vests at age 30 where the annual inflation rate is 3%, the real benefit will have been eroded, when retirement occurs, to 36% of its value at the time of termination. The

42、 comparable figure for an employee who vests at age 40 is 48%, and for the employee vesting at age 50, it is 64%.These calculations do not consider the fact that where an earnings and service formula is employed the earnings upon which the benefit calculation is based will be those that were current

43、 at time of termination, not at time of retirement. This raises the possibility that even though an employee's combined or accumulated vested years of service may total 35 or 40 years and even though the accrued benefit under each plan may have been based on 1.5% of final average earnings, the r

44、eplacement ratio for earnings at the date of retirement may fall far short of 50%-60%.There is yet another characteristic of our private pension system, which, especially in recent years, has posed a serious threat to the benefit security of employees covered by defined benefit plans. Over half of t

45、he employees covered by private pension plans are covered by defined benefit plans. These plans provide the participant with the assurance that a specified benefit will be paid upon satisfaction of eligibility requirements and impose responsibility for funding and financing the benefit upon the plan

46、 sponsor. The plan sponsor funds the benefit based on actuarial estimates. It is possible, if certain assumptions are accepted, for a defined benefit pension plan to be underfunded or over-funded at various intervals. Since the early 1980s some 1700 companies have terminated over-funded pension plan

47、s covering about 2 million participants and recovered $19.7 billion in assets. On the surface participants were not adversely affected becauseall plan liabilities must be funded before a sponsor may terminate a plan and withdraw so-called excess assets. But the U.S. Department of Labor estimates tha

48、t workers covered by terminated plans receive only 55% of what they would have received had the plan been maintained. For younger workers the loss is extremely large. A 3G-year-old worker is estimated to lose 96% of his or her benefits under a final average earnings plan. For a 45-year-old the loss

49、is estimated to be 73%. These losses are attributable to the fact that when a pension plan is terminated the benefits payable are fixed at the level in effect at the time of termination. Thus, in the case of a formula providing employees with a benefit equal to 2% of their average earnings during th

50、e highest three out of the last five years of employment times years of service, the earnings figure and the years-of- service figure entered into the formula will be what was in effect at time of termination and not at the time of retirement. Obviously, the benefit payable at time of retirement for

51、 those years will be from somewhat to substantially below what it would have been had the plan been maintained.（节选）Employee Benefitsand Public Policy. Employee Responsibilities andRights Journal,2005:P199-210.翻译文章译文：员工福利与公共政策Richard W. Humphreys简介在员工职责和权力领域中一个重要的问题是这些事件是否被最好地处理了，通过国家政策（就像在劳资双方代表进行的谈

52、判和社会保障的情况下），地区决定（像个人健康保险和养老金这种情况），或者是以上两者的的结合。在美国，对员工职责和权力安排的各种公共或私人方法要求员工仔细检查来决定这个作为结果的“体系”是否1）充分的从经济意义上保存人力资源，并且2）就分享产品盈利而言是否是公正的。这篇文章的论题是关于私人养老金计划和团体保险项目的国家目标还没有或者不可能符合现今使用的制序机构。当考虑税收立法、监管立法和最低标准立法时， 得出了一个不可避免的结论：普遍提供雇佣基础上的退休和团体保险福利是一个国家的目标。经过四分之三个世纪的立法鼓励，为了实现这个目标，衡量这个失败的明显方法是那些没有被涵盖进私人养老金计划和团体保险

53、项目的劳动力人数。不太明显但同样提供信息的方法是享受私人养老金福利项目的人员范围，揭露出这些福利在贯穿他们工作事业中的损失或减少以及结局。通过税式支出和监管立法来完成今后私人部门福利覆盖范围的能力已经耗尽， 事实上所有劳动力增长将在那些很少有私人员工福利项目的部门出现，不断认识到在关于私人健康福利的筹资方面将会有一场危机，以上三种迹象引起此项关于国家员工福利目标的考查。概述员工福利占了报酬中一个牢固并不断增长的部分，取决于计算的东西和如何计算， 员工福利的价值在大概报酬的五分之一到五分之二之间波动着。从劳动力统计局（国家事务部，1989）获得的最新可用数据显示在私有产业中，所有员工的福利占总报

54、酬的27.3%，这个数据的变化取决于考虑中的产业部门、职业、地点和工会地位。劳动力统计局计算包括支付的非工作时间、加班费、 团体保险、退休和储蓄计划以及合法需求的福利，一些计算排除了合法需求的福利。当这些完成时，作为报酬一部分的福利占了总报酬的大概五分之一。然后统计局把福利作为总报酬的一部分来核算，这个总报酬是把直接报酬等同于所支付的时间而不是所工作的时间。 如果福利用介于总报酬和所工作时间的报酬的差别来表示，那么福利作为报酬的一部分会增加到总报酬的大概五分之二。在谈判桌上，后者是作为决定福利成本的相对普遍的基础。不管如何决定福利所占报酬的部分，关键是被团体保险所占的比例，这种团体保险包括健康

55、保险和退休计划。风险分摊和延迟收入项目组成了间接报酬的成分， 无论是从政府授权的税收支出还是从政府调控的角度，间接报酬的成分都是公共政策的主题。例如， 存在着非政府监管支配所支付的非工作时间和非税收支出。 带薪度假、带薪假期和带薪休息时间的报酬出现在工资支票上，并且从属于现今税收制度。对于各种惩罚形式和奖金，比如报到工资、加班工资、停工补偿费、加班费、节假日加班费和倒班费，上述情况也是属实的。由于这些目的的报酬也同样会出现在工资支票上，也从属于现今税收制度，属于 公平劳动标准法案的可能性例外, 可不受政府监管支配，当员工工作时间超过每周40 个小时，员工必须获得他们正常工资的1.5 倍。与作为

56、直接报酬的一部分所包含的福利不同，有一种以税收支出和监管为形式的政府让福利以间接报酬的形式存在。国会预算局强调这种存在的重要性，发现在 1988 年私有养老金的税收支出有600 亿美元，在个人所得税结构中代表一种最大的逃税项目(Mitchell,1985) 。根据议员DanRostenkowski 所说，健康福利的附加税收支出在300 亿至 400 亿美元间波动(Pension World， July 1989)。每年 1000 亿美元的税收支出构成了国会对雇佣基础上的退休和健康福利支持的清晰而确信的根据，这并不是近期才出现的政策。为支持私人养老金的税收支出可追溯到1913 年颁布的 联邦所得

57、税法案。 在这项立法的提供下，雇主可以把养老金责任不断增大的当前收税年看做一项普通的商业支出，但是来自养老金信托的收入则属于税收制度所支配，并且在员工主动服务期间必须按他们的福利数额缴税，退休后按养老金数额缴税。对雇主支付过去服务福利金是不免税的。在这些前提下，根据雇主对福利的捐赠，雇员必须缴税，这些捐赠可能是雇员从未获得过，并且雇主被允许可从总收入中减去捐赠数额，雇主享有随时修改或终止这个计划并把资金转为其他用处的权利比如非盈利使用。我国私有福利制度就满足确保风险的需求而存在的问题只有那些自愿资助员工福利制度的雇主才受监管支配是我国私有福利制度的一个独一无二的特征，除了这些雇主，其他雇主不考

58、虑监管立法过剩，这些监管立法体现了国会为了防止公共政策的扭曲而做的努力。如果你没有资助一项福利计划，你就不必考虑你自身是否符合89 章节（国内税收法规）中的不歧视规定； 如果你没有资助健康保险，你就没有必要告诉要结束合同的雇员，他们被规定得支付18 个月为了这种项目所花费的102%的费用给资助者；如果你没有资助一种规定的养老金福利，你就不必担心维持你的资金标准账户，你就没有必要支付大概在16 到 50 美金每个员工的费用给养老金担保集团，你也不用担心在计划终止情况下，让你的公司受到相当于30%的净价值的责任风险。当假设需要这些调控时，会有许多主张劝阻公共政策行为的福利管理人员趋向于去鼓励这种行为。我国收入和监管法令的内容也要求将注意力放在另外一个我国私有福利制度的独一无二的特征上，它强调了一个事实，你必须是一家资助退休项目和团体保险项目的公司的员工，当雇佣关系终止或者一个项目被终止，福利覆盖也将被终止。在养老金制度确定的情况下，这个特点是具有深远的重要意义，因为完成充足的退休收入是视覆盖范围持续性而定的，它需要在雇佣关系时间里获得福利