Bath & Body Works is a subsidiary of L Brands, Inc, a Fortune 500 company posting billions of dollars in revenue every year. Bath & Body Works, in our opinion, is unique among retail jobs in fostering an environment of caring, love, and passion for the products we sell. Our problem is that our compensation does not match the reported revenues and extraneous spending and policies of the brand. In Columbus, Ohio, home of L Brands’ own headquarters, store associates start at a mere $11.50 an hour, $11 for seasonal. Associates who have been with the brand for over three years report still making less than $12 an hour. Wages for SLT (keyholders, supervisors, and store managers) range from $13.50 - $20 an hour – hardly commensurate with many team members’ experience or levels of responsibility.

Despite an unprecedented and extremely difficult year for the retail industry, Bath & Body Works reported a record-breaking $6.43 billion dollars in sales in 2020 – up over a billion from 2019. L Brands itself reported $11.85 billion in revenue, despite an impending separation from the underperforming Victoria’s Secret brand. The CEO of L Brands and Bath & Body Works, Andrew Meslow, earned $18.5 million in total compensation in 2020. Other compensation packages of L Brands executives range from $1.5-6 million.  In a year where thousands of employees needed to file for unemployment due to the COVID-19 pandemic, reading about the salaries that our labor at the ground level provides for the higher ups stings. The brand also throws an annual summit for top selling store managers (who may or may not have the biggest impact on actual sales) that include swag bags with brand product, Tiffany jewelry, and iPads. Yet many store associates must work multiple jobs to make ends meet. If the brand can afford these levels of compensation, they can afford to pay its ground level associates a fairer wage.

One of the things that makes Bath & Body Works so popular around the country is its generous return policy. Customers are allowed – even encouraged – to return any item they’re not “100% satisfied” with. On the surface, this seems fair, but it has led to an overwhelming amount of abuse of the system. Nearly every day in stores across the country, customers bring in nearly empty and fully used products and can exchange them for a brand new, full size product. This undoubtedly eats into the company’s profits, but instead of discouraging unfair returns and exchanges, store associates’ wages are kept stagnant and impossible to live on and product prices are increasing. Three wick candles, arguably the flagship Bath & Body Works product, have increased in price by 13% over the last 5 years – from $22.50 to $25.50. Ask any long-time shopper of the brand and they’ll tell you – products are expensive, and the sales aren’t’ what they used to be. Of course, inflation is natural, but one would think that as profit margins increase, the employees making the sales would see a livable wage in their pockets.

Everyone I know that works at Bath & Body Works has expressed how much they love our products, our stores, our customers, and our teams. We all recognize that success and excellence should be rewarded. We are just demanding our fair share as well. We call on Andrew Meslow, the rest of the L Brands executives, and the Board of Directors to do the right thing and give associates a starting wage of at least $15 an hour.