Walmart is giving its employees a one-time cash bonus to its workers, including the hourly workers and still hiring employees of 150,000 during the coronavirus pandemic, it announced on Thursday.
Walmart has just announced that it is giving $300 to its full-time employees whereas the part-time employees are going to receive $150 which will have a total of $365 million.
Those who are employed hourly in the stores, clubs, supply chain centers, and offices will all qualify. It will be released to them on April 2.
Furthermore, Walmart is also planning to give the employees their quarterly bonus earlier than the scheduled date.
These bonuses would be a help for them. Dan Bartlett, Walmart executive vice president of corporate affairs said they would be able to use “some extra cash at a time when many Americans are probably worried about where their next paycheck is coming from.”
He added, “They’re doing Herculean work in our stores and serving customers in frankly a tense environment.”
Aside from the bonuses, they will also hire 150,000 employees until the end of May in their stores, clubs and other distribution centers and fulfillment centers.
This may be initially temporary but may become permanent over time. They plan to hire different key roles such as cashiers and stockers by making the process from an average of two weeks to 24 hours.
“We believe there are multiple industries seeing acute pain and layoffs due to [coronavirus] already,” Bartlett said. Walmart hopes that this hiring will help the countrymen “contributes a bit to easing the pain of this broader economic downturn that the coronavirus is causing.”
Currently, the demand from shoppers has increased as there is more stocking up of food and other necessities in preparation for the wider coronavirus outbreak. Currently, the entire grocery industry is under an extreme amount of stress and they have been working well with their suppliers to help in keeping well-stocked shelves.
Moreover, they have foreseen an increase in online shoppers. The pickup service wherein the customers could order groceries ahead of time and pick up at their store has been “getting slammed” he added.
It even is comparable to the atmosphere at Walmart for the past couple of days to that White House during the September 11 attack saying “I was in the White House during the 9/11 days. The pace and complexity of issues are on par.”
There is also a talk between the federal government and Walmart, aside from keeping their shelves stocked, that it will set up a drive-thru coronavirus testing sites in their parking lot.
One of these will soon be open to the public within the next 72 hours. He mentioned also, “We have teams on the ground, we have tents, and everything’s ready. Once we figure out the supply issue, I think we’ll be off to the races.”
They are just awaiting on different medical resources like personal protection equipment and swabbing test kits to start with this new endeavor. Hopefully, this would fast track the identification of those infected with the virus.
