Walmart WMT,
joined a growing list of retailers raising employee salaries to $ 15 an hour, but unlike rivals such as Target TGT,
Amazon AMZN,
and Costco COST,
all this now offering a base payment of $ 15 per hour for all employees, the nation’s largest private employer will maintain its initial salary at $ 11 per hour.
Wage increases at Walmart mean that approximately 730,000 workers per hour will receive at least $ 15 per hour once the change takes effect, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said Thursday. This represents half of the company’s hourly workforce.
“I’ve been working at Walmart for 11 years and earn only $ 11.85, and most of us cashiers along with hundreds of thousands of others are once again left out of the increases Walmart is giving,” said Mendy Hughes, Walmart cashier. a statement released after Walmart announced the salary increase. Hughes is a leader for United for Respect, which describes itself as a national non-profit organization that is not a union. The group says it has successfully campaigned for Walmart to raise its initial salary to $ 11 an hour in 2018.
“Being a cashier in the COVID-19 pandemic is one of the most dangerous jobs in existence,” she added. “Why is it so hard for America’s richest family to do just what they should have done years ago and raise the base salary for all Walmart members to $ 15 an hour?”
Walmart’s 730,000 hourly workers, who will continue to earn less than $ 15 an hour, are hardly alone.
In chains, including Home Depot HD,
Dollar Tree DLTR,
Chipotle CMG,
Burger King QSR,
Kroger KR,
McDonald’s MCD,
and Chick-fil-A, the cashiers all earn less than $ 12 an hour, according to Glassdoor, a site that collects anonymous salary information from current and former employees.
See also: What did the minimum wage increases do for McDonald’s restaurants – and their employees
“At Chipotle, we pay our workers hourly above federal minimums, and in some jurisdictions employees are already paid $ 15 an hour,” said Laurie Schalow, Chipotle’s director of corporate affairs.
Among these chains, Burger King and Dollar Tree cashiers earn the lowest, with average hourly wages of $ 9.
McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A and Burger King have many franchise locations across the country where franchise owners set employees’ salaries rather than the companies themselves.
Dollar Tree, Burger King and Kroger did not respond to MarketWatch’s request for comment.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that nearly 400,000 U.S. workers per hour earned exactly the current federal minimum wage of $ 7.25 per hour in 2019. Another 1.2 million workers earned below the minimum wage that year, without take into account paid advice, commissions and overtime, BLS reported.
President Joe Biden and Democratic lawmakers are working to raise the federal minimum wage to $ 15 an hour and eliminate the screaming minimum wage by June 2025.
As a result, about 17 million workers would see their wages rise, according to a report released earlier this month by the Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan federal agency.
The downside, however, is that 1.4 million workers could become unemployed as a result, according to the CMO’s average estimate. About 900,000 Americans would no longer live below poverty levels if a minimum wage of $ 15 an hour were promoted, the CBO estimated.
Biden challenged the CBO report during a Tuesday night town hall broadcast by CNN.
“There is just as much, if not more, evidence that it would grow the economy and, in the long and medium term, benefit both small and large businesses and not have such a dilating effect. “, he said. .
“But this is a debatable issue.”