Wal-Mart is the largest private employer in America. All those hundreds of thousands of clerks and baggers can take heart in new information the company filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission. According to SEC filings, Chairman of the Executive Committee, and past CEO David Glass made a total of $4,500,000 for the year ending January 31st., including salary and other incentives. That means a bagger at Wal-Mart making $6.50 an hour could make as much money as David Glass if they worked full-time 40 hour weeks for only 332 years. Considering the average lifespan of a man, the bagger at Wal-Mart would have to work more than 4 lifetimes (assuming working at Wal-Mart from birth to death) in order to make what the Chairman makes in one year. New Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott made $2.1 million. A bagger would only have to work 155 years full-time at Wal-Mart to earn Scott’s benefits from one year at Wal-Mart.
Estimating a “full-time” Wal-Mart bagger at $6.50 per hour for 28 hours a week, the ratio of the bottom worker at Wal-Mart to the top “retired” CEO is roughly an earnings ratio of 474 to 1. This past year, David Glass made in 4 hours (half a day) what the starting Wal-Mart worker earns in an entire year! They may all look alike in their blue aprons, but the wage spread at Wal-Mart is as big as their market share.
