Staff pay at SA’s retailers has once again come under scrutiny in a report by shareholder activism group Just Share, which raises concerns that companies in the sector contribute to entrenched poverty and inequality.
The report, which analysed remuneration disclosures by JSE-listed firms, found that Shoprite — the country’s biggest retailer and private sector employer — paid some of the lowest wages among the country’s top listed companies.
The report shows Shoprite’s internal minimum wage is R71,674 a year, about R5,972 a month before deductions. That’s barely above the national minimum wage and less than half of the R12,000-R15,000 monthly benchmark proposed by the Living Wage SA Network in 2022.
“The amount earned by low-income workers in SA — even if above national minimum wage levels — often enables survival but entraps people in poverty. In this way, employers who pay below living wage levels contribute towards poverty enslavement,” Living Wage SA Network said.
Shoprite said its entry-level staff were, on average, paid 11% above the national regulated minimum wage. The retailer added it was striving to balance “the drive to pay a ‘living wage’” with providing secure jobs and long-term growth opportunities. That includes the creation of 6,490 jobs; more than 15,000 internal promotions; investment in training; and the Shoprite Employee Trust, which has paid more than R500m to eligible employees in two years.
Just Share has found that just 15 of the 39 eligible companies in the JSE top 40 disclosed their internal minimum wage in the latest reporting period. Of the 15, Shoprite’s was the lowest. The highest disclosed minimum wage was R258,148.80 at investment group Remgro, followed by R250,000 at Investec and Impala Platinum.
In the retail sector, Woolworths reported an internal minimum wage of R99,450 a year, 39% higher than Shoprite’s, and several major companies in other sectors paid more than triple the retailer’s floor rate, Just Share said.
While not covered in the report, Spar also pays less than the minimum living wage, but has told Business Day it plans to implement that by 2026. It will roll out an 18-month phased programme to lift monthly pay to R12,500 initially and to R15,000 by end-2026.
Just Share recently criticised Woolworths’ new staff healthcare benefits as insufficient, arguing that while the initiative improves access to private medical care for more than 24,000 front-line workers, it does not address extreme wage inequality.
Woolworths has raised its minimum wage to R45 an hour and introduced the “Just Life” benefits package, but the group’s CEO still earns more than 1,308 times that of the lowest-paid employee.
Just Share previously revealed that average CEO pay in the retail sector is hundreds of times more than entry-level staff.
In 2024, Shoprite CEO Pieter Engelbrecht earned a total of R83m, up nearly R20m from 2023, though part of this included deferred incentives vested over two years. Woolworths CEO Roy Bagattini received R65m and Pick n Pay CEO Sean Summers earned R25m.
Just Share challenged Pick n Pay’s transparency on wages and employment equity at the group’s AGM last week. It urged the board to disclose the lowest-paid worker’s annual salary and race and gender pay gaps, data the company previously reported.
However, the company failed to provide a fixed figure, citing varied wages governed by union agreements, though it claimed to pay above statutory minimums with added benefits.
Just Share’s report also shows how low wages in retail contrast with other industries such as mining, where stronger unions and collective bargaining mean entry-level pay is often closer to a living wage.
In finance, higher wage floors are common, but many low-paid roles are outsourced and excluded from company figures.
The organisation warned that transparency without action risks normalising poverty wages. Simply disclosing wage gaps or internal minimum pay is not enough without commitment to fair and dignified remuneration, it added.
“Shoprite’s disclosure, while more transparent than many of its peers, highlights a broader issue — that transparency without transformation risks normalising precarity,” Just Share said.
“If companies use disclosure merely as a box-ticking exercise, without meaningfully considering what constitutes dignified, fair pay, the goal of wage justice remains elusive.”
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