Posted on 07/02/2010 6:27:25 PM PDT by Bad~Rodeo
Walmart Executive-Worker Pay Gap Strikes Chord in Chicago and Beyond
By Ed Smith's math, the CEO of Walmart earns more in an hour than his employees will earn in a year. Smith, an alderman in Chicago, presented posters at a city council meeting showing that Walmart CEO Michael Duke's $35 million salary, when converted to an hourly wage, worked out to $16,826.92. By comparison, at a Walmart store planned for the Windy City's Pullman neighborhood, new employees to be paid $8.75 an hour would gross $13,650 a year.
Smith's numbers could be a bit off. Equilar, an executive compensation research firm, calculates that Duke earned just south of $20 million in 2009 and $28 million in 2008, not counting millions of dollars in potential performance awards. But the alderman argued that there's still a "sad" contrast between Duke's compensation and the wages of his employees.
"How can you go to bed at night and sleep knowing you make this kind of money and the people working for you can hardly buy a package of beans and rice?" he asked in an interview with ABCNews.com.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
So?
It is the most successful business in the world. You have to reward success and many employees have good paying jobs.
Not saying the CEO deserves all that dough but let's face it. He isn't clocking out after the eight hour shift stocking the shelves in the toy aisle. These CEO jobs are 24 hour a day jobs in many instances and they last a few years. Not everyone is CEO of Walmart material but damn near anyone can work an eight hour shift at Walmart.
Next week we will see a retail reform act. Whats that ceo doing with all of the governments money?
Duke needs to put up posters in all the Walmart stores comparing Ed Smith’s hourly wage to a Chicago garbage colletor’s wage.
So? Likely worth more. Far more. If the worker wants to make that level of wage, he or she needs to go out and become a CEO of a Fortune 100 firm. How hard is that to understand?
If they want to earn more they can always apply for his job.
The CEO’s salary is set by the owners of Walmart. Go bug them.
Now, it really kills me that we have off-shored much of our manufacturing capability to low-wage rights-free, America-hating hellholes, in the name of cost-saving - but then the drivers of that (Walmart management) profits richly.
But correction of that is up to Congress, who abdicated their foreign trade regulating duties to the human-rights ignoring entities of the GATT and the WTO.
How much does Ed Smith make? How many people does he employ? What product or service does he provide?
At least he earns it, unlike our dipsh&t president.
The guy is underpaid.
Walmart creates private sector jobs.
Barry and his crowd destroy private sector jobs.
I don’t know what stage it is but it sure if funny how we never analyze Brad Pitt’s salary for making a movie that takes six weeks to film vs the guy selling the popcorn in the theater.
Yeh, SO? He is the boss of a zillion dollar, zillion employee company. And I bet he trained hard for this job, and I suspect he had lesser jobs before it, in preparation. AND he employs a lot of people who may not have other jobs.
SO WHAT? We love capitalism.
Like the school administrator who whines that he doesn’t make as much as a major league baseball player.
And, pray tell, how many of the Hollywood multi-million dollar stars make any contribution to the overall economic health of the ordinary citizen?
Finally, do these same "news reporters" complain about the millions the union leaders earn, which they have taken in "dues" payments by hard working wage earners?
a lot of the walmart employees that i encounter look like
their mommas dress them in the morning.
they’re over-paid.
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