How Rich Is The Dollar Tree CEO And What's The Average Pay Of Its Employees?

During the Great Recession of 2008, Dawn Hughey began to work at a Dollar General. The Huffington Post reports that while she was named manager of the store within four months of working there, the new position transpired to be the reason why stores like Dollar General and Dollar Tree could operate so cheaply. As a manager, she worked 70 hour weeks with an annual salary of just $34,700.

What Hughey made as manager is barely above what most non-managerial positions make, but involving multiple times the work. According to Indeed, average cashier and stocker salaries at Dollar Tree hover around $8.79 per hour to $8.90 per hour. Glassdoor has reviews stating employees have made $9 and $10 per hour for these roles. 

The assistant manager salary for Dollar Tree has a base average of $25,977 a year according to Glassdoor, while the average store manager salary is listed at $45,688. This is  because they peg an unlikely maximum salary of $517,000, which obviously affects the average numbers.

Most of these workers receive no benefits either, as Oregon Live reported while covering lawsuits and violations Dollar Tree has faced, mostly concerning unsafe working conditions. Most work only 30 hours a week, meaning Dollar Tree legally speaking does not have to give them benefits. Other lawsuits, as The Balance writes, were filed for similar breaches of labor rights, such as compelling their managers to skip their breaks, work without overtime, and even work without pay at all.

On the other end of the spectrum, Michael Witynski, the CEO and director of Dollar Tree, does pretty well for himself. According to Wallmine, he receives a compensation of $3,731,690 a year. He has also sold $4,073,990 of Dollar Tree stock in the last six years, leaving him with 21,953 units, or $3,689,871, in the company. This gives him a net worth of $11.5 million.

Witynski is not alone in making a killing from a business that, as Fast Company reports, destroys local economies by undercutting their prices and forcing their managers to work hours that are, well, unmanageable. On Wallmine's page for Dollar Tree, three other executives are mentioned who make more than a million in annual compensation, and there are ten others who get payouts in the hundreds of thousands. Presumably, they are too busy to alleviate the working conditions under which their managers operate.