{"id":343656,"date":"2018-01-13T19:20:12","date_gmt":"2018-01-13T18:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/walmart-pulls-devious-two-step-by-pairing-wage-hikes-with-mass-layoffs\/"},"modified":"2018-01-13T19:20:12","modified_gmt":"2018-01-13T18:20:12","slug":"walmart-pulls-devious-two-step-by-pairing-wage-hikes-with-mass-layoffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/walmart-pulls-devious-two-step-by-pairing-wage-hikes-with-mass-layoffs\/","title":{"rendered":"Walmart Pulls Devious Two-Step by Pairing Wage Hikes With Mass Layoffs"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"ProtestersProtesters hold signs during an anti Wal-Mart rally on City Hall steps on June 21, 2011 in New York City. (Photo: Mario Tama \/ Getty Images)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Walmart, the US’s largest private employer, announced to much fanfare on Thursday that it is raising the company-wide minimum wage from $10 to $11 — a move\u00a0eagerly touted<\/a>\u00a0by President Donald Trump. However, Walmart didn’t loudly announce that it was, at the same time, moving to\u00a0shut down<\/a>\u00a0more than 60 Sam’s Club stores nationwide and lay off thousands of workers.<\/p>\n

Sam’s Club is a wholly owned subsidiary of Walmart, and it is named after Walmart founder Sam Walton.\u00a0According to<\/a>\u00a0Business Insider, many of the company’s employees didn’t know they had lost their jobs until they showed up for work Thursday morning.<\/p>\n

Following news of the mass layoffs and store closures,\u00a0ThinkProgress’\u00a0Judd Legum\u00a0argued<\/a>\u00a0the timing of Walmart’s wage announcement “was almost certainly not an accident.”<\/p>\n

In addition to\u00a0inflating the generosity of the new bonuses<\/a>, Walmart appears to have launched its wage hike press blitz “to cover for thousands of unannounced layoffs,” Legum writes.<\/p>\n

“It would look very bad to announce dozens of store closures and thousands of layoffs right after receiving a massive corporate tax cut,” he\u00a0notes<\/a>, referencing the $1.5 trillion tax plan Trump\u00a0signed into law<\/a>\u00a0last month. “So instead, Walmart gave out what amounts to about two percent of the value of their tax cut over 10 years in bonuses. Made a big deal about it. Got praise from the president. Meanwhile, it was abruptly shutting stores across the country. It’s diabolical.”<\/p>\n

“Walmart is pulling off an extremely devious two-step,”\u00a0concluded<\/a>\u00a0George Zornick, Washington editor of\u00a0The Nation.<\/p>\n

During a press briefing on Thursday, both Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders were asked to comment on the mass layoffs — and on the administration’s attempt to take credit for the wage increases, but not the dozens of store closures.<\/p>\n

“I don’t have…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Protesters hold signs during an anti Wal-Mart rally on City Hall steps on June 21, 2011 in New York City. (Photo: Mario Tama \/ Getty Images) Walmart, the US’s largest private employer, announced to much fanfare on Thursday that it is raising the company-wide minimum wage from $10 to $11 — a move\u00a0eagerly touted\u00a0by President […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":343657,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-343656","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=343656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/343657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}