(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- Wal-Mart, the country’s biggestprivate employer, has been criticized by activistsand by its own workers for not paying living wages or providingfull-time hours to those who want them. This week, however, all ofthe company’s senior executives appeared on a stage inRogers, Ark., for six hours, and no one in the audience ofinvestors and analysts asked much about the company’s 1.3 millionU.S. employees.

It was only afterward, when Wal-Mart Chief Executive Office DougMcMillon spoke to reporters, that the issue of pay cameup. McMillon said that Wal-Mart “wants to be in a situationwhere we don’t pay minimum wage at all.” That sounds good. But it’sso vague that it’s hard to know if this amounts to a shift or ismerely a clever attempt to set the issue aside.

McMillon noted that of Wal-Mart’s U.S. workforce, fewer than6,000 earn the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. The companyreports an average full-time hourly wage of $12.92, but it doesn’tprovide a figure for its many part-timers—30,000 of whomwill lose their health benefits next year—inaddition to those who already lost them.

Any increase in wages would come as part of a larger effort to“invest in its associate base,” McMillon said, with thepossibility of using promotions and bonus payments to improveopportunities for workers. He didn’t provide any other details.

At the investor conference, McMillon called the store employeesWal-Mart’s “secret sauce.” After describing some of the problems atthe stores—not having enough of the right items in stock and longcheckout lines among them—he said: “You get what you deserve. We’regetting what we deserve. We have to set up our associates to win.They need us to get some things done so they can.”

That was on Wednesday. Less than a day later, a couple ofhundred protestors marched in New York and Washington, calling onWal-Mart to pay workers $15 an hour in an echo of the rallying cry for fast-food workers. TheNew York protesters walked to a Park Avenue building that is hometo Alice Walton, daughter of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton and awoman with a net worth of $34.7 billion, according to the BloombergBillionaire’s Index. The Walton family, among the richest in theworld, owns slightly more than 50 percent ofWal-Mart.

The protesters wanted to present Walton with a petition signedby Wal-Mart workers in 50 states asking for the company to publiclycommit to paying $15 an hour and providing consistent, full-timeschedules. Walton, who spends little time in the city, wasn’tthere. Twenty-six people were arrested for blocking traffic.

“Wal-Mart doesn’t have any locations in New York City. Perhapsthat’s the reason why the workers this group is talking about don’thave access to career advancement or competitive wages or quarterlybonuses, or their schedules three weeks in advance,” Kory Lundberg,a Wal-Mart spokesperson said in a statement.“If they worked at Wal-Mart they would.”

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