Nevertheless, Walmart has had to make concessions to the pressure upon the business, mostly from OUR Walmart. It is in the process of enacting a series of wage hikes, starting with boosts to $9 an hour this year and $10 next year for a half-million of its lowest paid workers (out of 1.4 million), changes in scheduling policy, more accommodating pregnancy policies (after OUR Walmart’s “Respect the Bump” campaign).
But a new study from one of OUR Walmart’s think-tank partners, Demos, finds that even with the promised future raise to $10 an hour minimum, workers in every state would not earn enough to support the basic needs of even a single adult at the company’s normal “full-time” schedule of 34 hours per week. Yet Walmart continues a stock buy-back scheme that has expended tens of billions of dollars in recent years and has accomplished nothing but enrich a core group of shareholders.
