WASHINGTON -- On Tuesday, a Walmart executive rebuked the D.C. Council in anop-ed in the Washington Post, declaring that the company would scuttle plans for three stores if the city enacted a living-wage law targeted at big-box retailers. The bill, which passed a council vote on Wednesday, would require a $12.50 minimum wage for workers at companies with more than $1 billion in global sales.
For those who follow Walmart's labor disputes, that $12.50 living wage seemed quite close to another figure commonly associated with the world's largest retailer: its average store worker wage, as reported by the company.
According to Walmart, full-time store workers now earn $12.78 per hour on average, or 28 cents higher than the proposed D.C. mandate. That's an average wage -- quite different from a starting wage. But considering the Walmart footprint leans heavily suburban and rural, a $12.50 starting wage in one of the most expensive cities in the country wouldn't seem too out of whack with Walmart's self-reported wage data.
So what gives?
Walmart's $12.78 figure probably presents a misleading picture of what store workers actually make. As the company itself notes, the $12.78 calculation excludes part-time workers, and it includes department managers who are paid hourly and probably earn a good deal more than cashiers, stockers and sales associates.
It's hard to know how much this skews things, because Walmart doesn't disclose how much of its workforce is part-time or how much those workers actually earn.
The company only says that a "majority" of its workers are full-time, or logging 34 hours or more per week. So, in theory, 49.9 percent of store workers could be part-timers, temps or seasonal workers who would drag down the average wage if they were included in the company's math. (Similarly, Walmart will only say that a "majority" of its workers get company-sponsored health care benefits, declining to offer an exact figure.