BLOOMBERG: Wal-Mart Stores’ Doug McMillon, a home-grown chief executive who got his start as a store employee, has made his most radical change yet at the world’s biggest retailer.
He’s raising wages for 500,000 employees—both full-time and part-time. They’ll get at least $9 an hour starting this April, and at least $10 an hour starting next February. Wal-Mart is also responding to labor critics by telling employees they’ll have their schedules at least 2½ weeks in advance, and some workers will get fixed shifts.
Wal-Mart has long been viewed as the Evil Empire of retail, and that image has only deepened in the past several years. There have been reports of stores in disarray and crummy customer service. A fledgling employee union, Our Walmart, has held strikes and demonstrations and kept up a drumbeat of sad tales of workers who fell victim to low pay, irregular hours, and an uncaring bureaucracy. This has all taken a toll on the company’s numbers. Prior to a rebound the past two quarters, Wal-Mart’s U.S. comparable sales were flat or down for six straight quarters… (more)
