The Walmart Raises
By Walmart has announced a pay raise for its workers.
The company said it would pay even its lowest-level workers at least $9 an hour starting this spring, comfortably above the $7.25 federal minimum wage, and push that to $10 in 2016. The company also said it would strengthen a “department manager” role, giving it a minimum wage of $13 per hour this year and $15 next, thus offering low-wage hourly workers a clearer path to advancement. Including similar bumps at Walmart-owned Sam’s Clubs, the company expects 500,000 workers to receive a raise at a cost of $1 billion a year, executives said in a conference call with reporters.
This is why organizing efforts like the United Food and Commercial Workers’ campaign with the Walmart workers is so important. UFCW is rightfullly taking a good deal of credit for this. The bad publicity the company has received for its poverty wages, for holding food donation drives for its own workers, for making pregnant employees work with dangerous chemicals, and so many other awful corporate behaviors has made a difference. While the Times article linked above suggests this is Walmart responding to a tightening labor market, I am highly dubious that this is the only major reason for these raises. After all, it’s not like the early 2000s when fast food chains were offering signing bonuses for new workers. The labor market is still pretty bad for a lot of workers. Rather, it’s more likely that the fear of losing those workers to slightly better paying jobs combined with the need for Walmart to get some good publicity.
And as Mariya Strauss discusses, this is very much a publicity move, part of a larger pattern of the company to make cosmetic changes in its business practices whenever the criticism of its practices generate particularly poor publicity. After all, it’s not like $10 an hour is some great shakes. In many states and municipalities, minimum wage law is moving to and above $10.