AT&T has angered many former employees by reducing life insurance and death benefits as of January 1 for approximately 220K former workers. One former employee, Dean Allison, told The Wall Street Journal that he accepted an early buyout offer to retire in 1998 and was promised a death benefit of $63K would go to his wife. AT&T notified him that they will pay no more than $15K if he dies. Managers who retired had their life insurance pegged at 1x their annual pay. That number has been reduced to just $15K. Putting more flames on the fire, the company has excluded executives from the death benefit reduction. The heirs of Randall Stephenson, who left the company in 2020 after serving as its CEO, will receive a massive payout of $3.6 million under his current life insurance plan. AT&T’s finance chief John Stephens has the most to gain from the benefits reduction. The company offered to pay him an extra $500K if he meets any one of three financial targets, one of which is cutting $1 billion or more from AT&T’s obligation for retiree pension and benefits.