Some of Walmart’s managers are getting a pay raise, but it could be so that the retail giant can circumvent new federal overtime rules, according to a Reuters report.
Last month, Walmart raised the starting pay for its managers from $45,000 to $48,500; the new federal overtime regulation, which takes effect Dec. 1, will require employers to pay overtime to any employee earning less than $47,500 annually, double the current limit of $23,660.
“We think the starting rate of $48,500 a year … would make a lot of business sense for our company,” Randy Hargrove, a Walmart spokesman, told Reuters.
Walmart did not specify how many employees would be receiving the raise. Currently, Walmart is the largest private employer in the U.S. and employees about 1.5 million employees in a variety of positions that include store staff, managers and truck drivers.
Walmart also announced in September intentions to pay more than $201 million in second-quarter bonuses to hourly store employees after 99 percent of its stores met self-imposed targets for cleanliness, service and faster checkout times. The company also increased entry level wages to $10 an hour early this year and said in December of last year that it planned to invest an additional $2.7 billion in employee compensation and training over the next two years.
All these announcements come as Walmart cut around 7,000 back-office accounting and invoicing jobs over the summer.
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