“Congratulations Gayle on 44 years with the company!!” the original post read. “What a huge accomplishment! We appreciate everything you do!”
While the gesture was meant to recognize Gayle for her more than four decades of service, the post sparked criticism from commenters who felt that flowers were an underwhelming reward for someone who has spent nearly half a century showing loyalty to the retailer.
One Facebook user even wrote: “That ‘arrangement’ came from one of their random displays. She had to return it,” with another adding that “the look on her face says it all.” Another Facebook commenter wrote that employees used to get “pensions, bonuses,” and “now it’s pizza parties and poverty.”
When Gayle kicked off her career at Walmart, the company offered a benefit that has since disappeared in its original form, as well: company-funded profit sharing.
Walmart once offered employees a share of its profits
When Gayle started working at Walmart more than four decades ago, the retailer — established in Rogers, Arkansas in 1962 — was still expanding its national footprint. Over the following decades, it grew into one of the world’s largest companies by market cap, with an employee benefits program that once included automatic profit-sharing contributions, in addition to retirement savings.
For 39 years, Walmart’s former profit-sharing program allowed eligible U.S. employees to receive company-funded contributions to their retirement accounts, which equaled up to four percent of pay.
Unlike a traditional 401(k), in which employees generally contribute part of their own earnings in order to receive the corresponding company match, profit sharing provides an additional source of retirement savings funded entirely by the employer.
According to Walmart’s 2010 retirement plan filing, associates generally became participants following one year of employment, and the plan was “entirely funded by the company.” The company made “an additional contribution to the associates’ 401(k) component of the plan,” and associates could also “elect to contribute a percentage of their earnings to the 401(k) component of the plan.” During fiscal 2010, for example, participants could contribute up to 50% of their pretax earnings.
But the benefit was not guaranteed to remain at the same level every year. Walmart’s disclosures have specified that company contributions were discretionary, meaning that the amount could vary depending on the company’s decisions.
Annual contributions made by the company were $1.1 billion, $1.0 billion and $945 million in fiscal 2010, 2009 and 2008, respectively.
