– How much do you get paid here? – Someone asked at one the employees. -About $130 pesos a day- She answered…
The team of Brazilian Guilherme Loureiro, leader of Walmart de México, is negotiating with some 8,000 employees looking for a salary increase of 20 percent. The deadline expires on March 5, before going on strike, say representatives of these workers.
Let’s just suppose that one of those Walmart employees earns 5 thousand pesos a month (which we know as a fact is less) and managed to buy a car. Just gasoline for this person´s car per month, would exhaust 80 percent of its income only in that expense.
Unlike what happens in Mexico, in the United States it is possible to know how much the head of the company earns. Doug McMillon the CEO of Walmart, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, which controls Walmart de México, In 2017, earned 22 million 791 thousand 276 … dollars. That is the most recent information available. That is equivalent today to about 445 million pesos, or 37 million pesos per month, enough to pay 74 thousand people who earn 5 thousand pesos. They would almost fill the Dallas Cowboys stadium.
With the information provided by the New York Stock Exchange, in the United States we can also know how much an average Walmart employee in the world earns, in order to compile different economic realities. Account to those who are in Europe, in Mexico or beyond the Rio Grande: that average is 19 thousand 177 dollars per year, or, $1,598 dollars per month that equals about 31 thousand pesos… except that it is not that way in Mexico, where an employee makes an average of 60 thousand pesos A YEAR which is approximately $3,000 USD PER YEAR!
Walmart de México contributes to the income of Walmart Inc., but the Mexican Walmart is actually more profitable than the second one, because the net profit in Mexico is around a margin of 6 percent on the income, while the company at the global level reports one less than 3 percent.
Arithmetic is necessary. If eight thousand employees who demand an increase are paid, say, a thousand pesos more per month, the company must pay 8 million pesos more or 96 million pesos a year, a number that would not make much noise for Walmart’s income.
But it is not that easy. If eight thousand get the benefit, others may also demand it and Walmart de México has almost 200 thousand employees.
Paying one thousand pesos more each would become an unexpected expense for 2 thousand 400 million pesos more per year that would reduce the profits of the company to represent 5.5 percent of annual revenues, instead of 6 percent in 2018, of according to data collected by Bloomberg.
That, not counting social spending for payments to IMSS and INFONAVIT, which unlike many small stores, Walmart does pay. In the case of an additional expense of that level, Loureiro would have at least two options: to reduce indefinitely the profits of the shareholders, or marginally raise prices in their stores.
If decisions are wrongly taken, that can fuel something in Mexico called ‘social resentment’ which is what motivated voters to vote for Lopez Obrador´s left party MORENA.
Walmart faces its major challenge in Mexico since it opened its doors.
The Yucatan Times
Newsroom
