America’s Largest Companies Are Systematically Short-changing Workers
The work sucks, and the pay is too low. It’s a nearly universal constant in America, but for many workers at some of the largest food service and retail companies in America, paying people less than a living wage is a matter of corporate policy, according to a new study.
Wage Tracker, a new company designed by the Economic Policy Institute and the Shift Project, took a closer look at the 66 largest food and retail companies in America. Some of the results are staggering, and provide a fascinating window into working at some of America’s biggest chains. For example, Dollar General pays 92 percent of its employees less than $15. McDonald’s is at 89 percent. In both of these companies, more than 1 in 5 employees earn less than $10 an hour. These are the wages of poverty, but sadly they are the norm, especially in communities where these larger chains have outsold other competitors. Dollar General began a nationwide expansion in largely disadvantaged rural communities, including local Walmarts (where 51 percent of workers earn less than $15 an hour, and 91 percent of those earning less than $20 an hour) in communities where There was no domination, there was a gap to be filled.
The tracker itself is public, and allows you to compare the percentage of employees who are below a certain threshold at each company. An analysis of Rolling Stone’s data shows that only 22 of the 66 listed companies pay their employees 50 percent or more of their wages in excess of $15 an hour. Another 44 companies pay low wages to most of their employees. The $15 minimum wage in Congress has been shot down several times due to Democratic incompetence and Republican stubbornness, but it is still widely recognized as the minimum for workers living in today’s society.
Workers across the country have attempted to organize in various ways to bring about this change themselves, most notably through the Fight for $15 campaign and the new wave of unionization that has targeted some of the biggest firms on this list. . For example, at Starbucks, where 63 percent of workers make less than $15 an hour, individual stores are increasingly voting to unionize with the independent Starbucks Workers United. According to a new report from Vice News, the company has responded with brutal union-busting, sacking at least 18 pro-union activists since February. But in even worse-paying chains like McDonald’s and Dollar General, relentless turnover prevents workers from building union movements. A pre-pandemic study found that workers were twice as likely to leave work if they were paid the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.
Some companies, such as Amazon and its subsidiaries, have implemented large minimum wage increases themselves, bringing all their employees upwards of $15 an hour. This may sound like altruism, but it is actually a calculated decision to undermine the overall goals of employees wanting to unionize. It’s a good reminder that even $15 an hour doesn’t address the inherent exploits that the major chains on this list depend on to pump up their profit margins. This forces them to remove more than just their employees by other means, such as Amazon’s punitive productivity quotas.
If you need more home operated from this point on, click on any company in the tracker and take a quick look at the “Revenue” and “CEO Salary” lines. The latter is always a lot more than $15 an hour.
