Dive Brief:
- Wal-Mart, the nation's largest employer with more than one million workers, got much press attention when it decided to raise it's wages for hourly workers by 2% across the nation. But some workers and advocates believe the massive retailer is finding ways to offset its generosity on the backs of employees, according to the New York Times.
- Employees and worker advocates both told the Times that Wal-Mart is using "subtle" strategies in offsetting the expected raise hike costs. For example, say critics, Wal-Mart has reduced merit raises and launched a training program that can keep employees stuck at $9 an hour for up to a year and a half.
- On the issue of raise timing, Wal-Mart said it was “enabling hourly workers to earn their annual pay increase months earlier than expected.” Yet, according to the Times, many workers' raises under the new system actually were less than under the old system.
Dive Insight:
Regarding the training program, called Pathways, Walmart told the Times that with its very high turnover rate (500,000 workers leave every year), it needed the program to reduce attrition. It said all employees hired after Jan. 1 of 2016 started at $9 an hour, but move up to $10 when trained.
Walmart executives interviewed by the Times denied the program was created to intentionally keep wages under $10, and the Times also noted that Wal-Mart has pledged $2.7 billion to lift wages and improve technology. Also in Wal-Mart's favor, the Times reports that the average part-time worker today earns $10.58 an hour, compared with $9.48 in February of last year.
Even so, Stephanie Luce, a professor of labor studies at the City University of New York, told the Times she believed Wal-Mart was intentionally trying to delay the raise increases, adding that the Pathways program wasn't "real training."
