Walmart quietly lays off thousands of workers after bonus announcement
Walmart quietly lays off thousands of workers after bonus announcement
Workers across the country were not told of the closings and showed up to work to find stores shuttered.
JUDD LEGUM JAN 11, 2018, 1:50 PM
Thursday morning, Walmart had a flashy announcement: Thanks to corporate tax cuts, it was giving its employees bonuses of up to $1,000. Walmart and President Trump pointed to the announcement as proof that the corporate tax cuts are really a boon to working-class Americans.
This announcement, as ThinkProgress reported earlier, was much more complicated than it first sounds.
Walmart employees are eligible for the $1,000 bonus only if they’ve worked at the company for 20 years. Most Walmart employees, of course, haven’t worked there that long.
The one-time bonus Walmart announced this morning amounts to just over 2 percent of the total value of the tax cut to the company.
But now it appears the announcement was timed carefully to cover for thousands of unannounced layoffs.
Business Insider reports that today, Walmart is abruptly closing numerous Sam’s Clubs stores across the United States.
https://thinkprogress.org/walmart-bonus-layoffs-ed187882b011/