Jeon Soo-chan, E-mart labor union leader, said that the management has kept on asking the workers to understand the difficult business environment surrounding the company and to further tighten the belts to weather the storm for the past years.

While E-mart recorded enormous operating profits amounting 546.8 billion won(US$474.5 million) last year, 8.6% higher year on year, however, the workers' wages remained just at the level of the national minimum wage and the wage increase rate for the workers just inched up to 2%.

Last year, the average annual wage for the E-mart workers was 17.61 million won(US$15,280). The average hourly wage was 6,507 won(US$5.65) which is only 37 won(3 cents) higher than the minimum hourly wage of 6,470 won fixed for this year. It seems that the wage hike rate at E-mart has followed the trend of the national minimum wage.

Then, how about the level of executive's pay at E-mart? The Korea Daily Labor News(labortoday) checked the pays of E-mart CEOs in the past which were disclosed in the data analysis, retrieval and transfer system(DART) of the Financial Supervisory Service to find out the wage gap between the executives and workers.

Former E-mart CEO Kim, Hae-seong who retired in December last year received 1.07 billion won(US$929,000) in 2014, 1.37 billion won(US$1.19 million) in 2015 and 0.89 billion won(US$772,000) in the first half of last year alone which is estimated to have reached nearly 1.8 billion won(US$1.56 million) in 2016.

Former E-mart co-CEO Lee Kap-soo was paid 0.66 billion won(US$573,000) in 2014 and 0.76 billion won(US$660,000) in 2015. Another former E-mart CEO Hur In-cheol who retired in March 2014 brought home with a total amount of 2.4 billion won(US$ 2.1 million) including the severance pay of 1.9 billion won(US$1.65 million).

reported by Ku Tae-woo
translated by Kim Sung-jin

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