GOP Tax Cuts: MetLife Raising Min. Wage, Boosting Bonuses & Retirement Plans

Nick Kangadis | February 13, 2018
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It just goes to show that increasing employee wages can be done, but not as a result of the Leftist mentality of constantly raising taxes or demanding laws to raise the minimum wage. If you give companies incentive do good business, the employees share in their company’s success.

Insurance provider MetLife announced on Monday that it’s going to increase its employees minimum wage to $15 an hour. Not only that, but the New York-based company will also boost retirement benefits and implement other bonuses as a result of the GOP tax cuts.

According to MetLife’s statement, the plan includes:

  • Establishing a company minimum wage of $15 an hour, well above the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.
  • Establishing a minimum MetLife-provided group life insurance benefit of $75,000, regardless of the employee’s pay. Previously, the benefit was set at one times annual pay.
  • Introducing a $300 minimum monthly credit for the cash-balance formula of the company’s defined benefit pension plan, also regardless of the employee’s pay. MetLife is one of a limited number of Fortune 50 companies that continues to provide its employees with both a defined benefit pension plan and a defined contribution plan to help them build secure retirements.
  • Enhancing the 401(k) plan design by moving to auto-enrollment for employee contributions and immediate eligibility for, and vesting in, employer matching contributions. This is scheduled to take effect in 2019.
  • Extending company-paid group legal services offered through MetLife’s Hyatt Legal Plans. Currently approximately one third of MetLife employees in the United States are enrolled in this voluntary benefit. With this change, legal services will be provided to MetLife’s 18,000 employees in the United States at the company’s expense.

See what happens when you actually provide companies financially viable opportunities to share their profits with their employees?

We’ve seen numerous corporations pass along their tax savings to their employees. Companies like Walt Disney Company, Home Depot, Hostess and FedEx — among others — have been able to give back to their employees after seeing the corporate tax rate slashed from 35 percent to 21 percent.

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