A federal settlement has placed Walmart’s pay practices under scrutiny, with the retail giant agreeing to pay $100 million amid allegations that it misled workers about their expected earnings. At the center of the controversy are thousands of drivers in Walmart’s Spark delivery program who claim they were shorted millions in promised base pay and tips. How were those earnings calculated, and how did the actual payouts compare to what drivers were led to expect? Read on to uncover the practices that sparked the lawsuit and why this case could prove far more significant than a typical wage dispute.
Walmart faces accusations of underpaying Spark delivery drivers
Walmart Inc. has reached a $100 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) following claims that the big-box retailer systematically deprived its delivery drivers of tens of millions in earned income. In a statement released Thursday, the commission detailed how the Bentonville, Arkansas-based company allegedly misled its workforce regarding both base compensation and potential gratuities.
The legal action, supported by a coalition of 11 states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Utah, and Wisconsin — targets Walmart’s crowdsourced delivery platform, Spark. According to the FTC, Walmart enticed gig workers by displaying “inflated” figures for base pay and tips that did not reflect the actual payouts.
Beyond the impact on drivers, the investigation found that Walmart allegedly misled its customers by promising that 100% of tips would go directly to their delivery person. In reality, the FTC claims that when a single customer order was “batched” or split among multiple drivers, Walmart failed to disclose that those tips were being divided, leaving individual workers with far less than they anticipated.
“Labor markets cannot function efficiently without truthful and nonmisleading information about earnings and other material terms,” stated Christopher Mufarrige, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.
As a condition of the settlement, Walmart is legally mandated to overhaul its transparency protocols. This includes the launch of a new earnings verification program designed to guarantee that the numbers drivers see on their screens match the deposits in their bank accounts.
Restoring trust in the gig economy
Walmart’s $100 million settlement serves as a major corrective for a gig economy that has often operated with little transparency, signaling that even the world’s largest retailers are not above federal labor standards. The FTC’s action addresses a “bait-and-switch: model where drivers accepted jobs based on one set of figures but were paid another — a practice that is a fundamental threat to the economy. By forcing Walmart to pay out tens of millions in restitution and implement an earnings verification program, the settlement aims to ensure that the flexibility of gig work doesn’t become a loophole for wage theft.
The scale of this dishonesty is particularly significant because of the sheer magnitude of the Spark Driver program. Launched in 2018, Spark has rapidly evolved into a massive, crowdsourced delivery engine that now powers Walmart’s logistics across the United States. With nearly one million drivers having completed more than 270 million deliveries nationwide, the program has become a primary source of income for a vast workforce. Because so many people rely on this platform, the allegations of inflated base pay and hidden tip-splitting didn’t just affect a small group; they impacted the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of workers.
Furthermore, the settlement highlights the aggressive growth of Walmart’s delivery service, which has become the backbone of its quest for retail dominance. In fiscal 2026, Walmart’s e-commerce sales skyrocketed to over $150 billion, with store-fulfilled deliveries (the very orders Spark drivers handle) seeing growth rates of nearly 50%. Walmart currently reaches 93% of U.S. households in under three hours, positioning it as the second-largest e-commerce player in the country. This massive infrastructure relies entirely on the trust of its drivers; when that trust is broken through deceptive pay tactics, it threatens the stability of a service that millions of Americans now depend on for daily essentials.
In a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press, Walmart said it values “the hard work and dedication of the drivers who deliver great service and products” to their customers.” It noted that it has issued payments to affected drivers and continues to make additional payments as appropriate. “We are continuously improving procedures to ensure fairness and transparency for drivers,” Walmart added.
Sources: The Associated Press, Supermarket News