Target Expands Parental Leaves and Other Benefits for Hourly and Part-Time Workers – Quartz at Work

Target has announced plans to extend childcare and family leave benefits to 350,000 employees in its stores, warehouses and headquarters, whether they are full-time or part-time. , employees or at the time.

Effective June 30, Target's new paid family leave policy will provide workers with up to four weeks of paid leave to care for a newborn or a sick family member. Beginning in the fall, Target store and distribution center workers will have 20 days of on-call or home care or home care. According to Target's website, 43% of employees at the company have children at home.

Historically, the availability of paid family leave has been skewed in favor of well-paid workers in white-collar jobs.

But despite the tightness of the US labor market and an unusually high turnover, retailers such as Target, Walmart and Amazon compete in terms of pay and benefits to attract and retain talent.

In April, Target announced that it would increase its minimum hourly wage from $ 1 to $ 13 from June. This is higher than Walmart's $ 11 hourly minimum, but lower than Amazon's and Costco's $ 15 minimum wage. Target said it expects to pay a minimum hourly wage of $ 15 by the end of 2020.

Employers are increasingly considering that more generous parental benefits are a competitive advantage. Starbucks, for example, last year simplified the transaction for employees at its store by offering six weeks of paid leave to all parents, not just biological mothers. But like many other retailers and restaurant chains, the company has different levels of benefits for its staff, with employees generally being eligible for more generous benefits. When it announced the six weeks of leave for baristas, Starbucks already granted up to 18 weeks of maternity leave to birth mothers and up to 12 weeks of leave to parents who did not have a birth.

In terms of parental benefits, Target seems to have outstripped its biggest rival by far. Walmart, the country's largest private employer, provides paid parental leave to all employees in full-time paid and full-time stores, as well as 10 weeks of paid maternity leave for women who have worked at least 12 months in the workplace. business. But the Walmart program does not include part-time workers, who would represent half of its workforce.

Target also stated that it recently doubled the amount of the proposed refund to hourly employees or salaried employees who incur adoption or surrogacy fees.