What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets

Michael Rice, a Wal-Mart employee, died suddenly of a heart attack. Wal-Mart had taken out a life insurance policy on their employee, allegedly without his or his wife’s knowledge, and collected $300,000 from his death.

It has long been the practice of companies to take out life insurance on their CEOs and top executives to offset the significant loss of skill and knowledge if they die, and the lost income incurred as new staff are found and trained. Insurance on rank-and-file workers, known as “janitor’s insurance”—as was the case in Michael Rice’s case study—is a new phenomenon. The investments in worker insurance are tax-free. Most employees aren’t told of the schemes, or in some cases, they give consent based on a comparatively small payout that their family would receive in the case of their death. These employees don’t know of the discrepancy between what their family would receive compared to what the company would receive.

As well as the lack of informed consent, workers are objectified in this scheme; They are commodities worth more dead than alive. Life insurance morphs from a scheme designed to safeguard families into a corporate tax break.