2015 Executive PayWatch highlights Walmart at center of growing inequality crisis
(Washington, DC, May 13, 2015) – As Americans rally behind a robust raising wages agenda for working families, CEO pay for major U.S. companies has skyrocketed. According to the new AFL-CIO Executive PayWatch, CEO pay increased nearly 16 percent in 2014.
The Executive Paywatch website, the most comprehensive searchable online database which tracks CEO pay, showed that in 2014, the average production and nonsupervisory worker earned approximately $36,000 per year, while S&P 500 company CEO pay averaged $13.5 million per year – a ratio which has grown to 373-to-1.
“America faces an income inequality crisis because corporate CEOs have taken the raising wages agenda and applied it only to themselves,” said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. “Big corporations spend freely on executive perks and powerful lobbyists to strip rights from workers, but when it comes to lifting up the wages of workers that make their companies run, they’re nowhere to be found. Too often workers are seen as costs to be cut, rather than assets to be invested in. Americans deserve better from those who have earned so much off the backs of working men and women, and we must start by adding transparency to the CEO pay process and requiring companies disclose their CEO-to-median employee pay ratios.”
Mega-retailer Walmart, highlighted in this year’s PayWatch, represents one of the most egregious examples of CEO-to-worker pay inequality. CEO Douglas McMillon, the nation’s largest employer, earns $9,323 an hour compared to $9 for a beginning employee salary. A new employee would have to work for 1036 hours just to equal the pay McMillon earns in one hour. PayWatch also highlights the wealth of the six Walton family members who have more wealth than 43 percent of America’s families combined.
“In 2013, I earned about $12,000 as a full-time employee, which at Walmart isn’t always 40 hours each week,” said Tiffany, a former Walmart worker who has worked in both Maryland and Louisiana for the company. “These poverty wages force my family to receive public assistance. Walmart doesn’t value me. I believe in working hard and that my work should be valued. This is why I will not stop fighting until Walmart commits to raising wages and begins valuing all of its workers.”
More information about Walmart’s massive CEO-to-worker pay disparity and inequality among S&P 500 companies can be found at www.paywatch.org.
Contact: Anthony DeAngelo (202) 637-5018