HUFFINGTON Post: …At a recent event, Bloomberg LP President Dan Doctoroff pointed out to the Walmart chief executive that even though his company paints itself as “serving an emerging middle class,” many of its employees aren’t paid enough to lead a normal life and some even resort to food stamps to make ends meet, as previously reported by The Huffington Post. This is what Duke had to say in response:
“Retailing is the most competitive industry out there, and we do pay competitive wages,” Duke told Doctoroff, according to Business Insider, noting that around 175,000 Walmart employees are promoted from entry-level positions each year. “Our associates are a great source of pride and personal inspiration for me,” he added.
But maybe that’s simply because he’s getting away with paying them so little. According to market research firm Ibis World, the average wage for a Walmart employee is $8.81 per hour, barely over the minimum wage in some states. Walmart executives say average rates are higher, with estimates including $11.75 per hour and $12.40 per hour. In contrast, Duke made $18.7 million in 2010. With a CEO-to-employee pay ratio of 717-to-1, that ranks Duke second among a list of 50 CEOs who are paid significantly more than their employees… (more)
EDITOR: A very competitive industry utilizing moderately skilled labor does dictate wage levels. (It is a misnomer to call many of these employees “unskilled” because these workers perform complicated positions.)
The hotel industry is like the retail business. As we have pointed out before, the same person working in our apartment division likely would earn 25% more than working in one of our hotels. We are ashamed of this but there isn’t much we can do.
Rental apartments is capital intensive; hotels are labor intensive. We would have done much better had we built apartment complexes rather than hotels.
The newspaper industry faces down pressures on wages not so much from direct competitors (for example, The Lancaster Newspaper has a benign monopoly here in Lancaster) but from technical innovation via the Internet. The former is very labor intensive as compared to the latter.
