Walmart's Dead Peasant Insurance

During the 1990s, Walmart implemented a controversial practice known as "Dead Peasant Insurance," where the company purchased corporate-owned life insurance policies on hundreds of thousands of its rank-and-file employees. Walmart named itself as the beneficiary of these policies, allowing the company to collect a payout upon the death of an insured worker. The existence of these policies was generally not disclosed to the employees' families and only came to public light through litigation in the early 2000s. Walmart ultimately settled the resulting lawsuits, bringing an end to a practice that sparked ethical concerns about companies profiting from the deaths of their employees.