Walmart offers another round of bonuses as coronavirus pandemic rages on

Walmart will give its 1.5 million workers across the United States a fourth financial bonus later this month for working during the pandemic as COVID-19[female[feminine cases are skyrocketing.

The world’s largest retailer will make cash payments of $ 300 to full-time employees and $ 150 to part-time workers on Dec. 24 “in recognition of associates’ continued commitment to customers during the pandemic,” he said. Walmart said in a statement.

Walmart has spent more than $ 2.8 billion on extra wages since the coronavirus hit, the company said.

Walmart Canada announced Friday that its 85,000 workers will receive a bonus on Dec. 11, with $ 250 going to full-time associates and $ 150 to part-time workers. In March, they received bonuses of $ 200 and $ 100, respectively.

The measures come a week after Amazon said it would spend more than $ 500 million in bonuses for frontline workers to recognize their efforts during the holiday season.

Like Walmart, Amazon gives $ 300 to full-time workers and part-time employees $ 150 as long as they are employed in the business for the entire month of December. Payments follow one-time bonuses of up to $ 500 in June.

The two companies, along with other large retailers, have drawn fire for ending the so-called risk premium for employees who continued to work during the pandemic.

Union activists say frontline workers remain potentially exposed to COVID-19 and deserve additional compensation, and note that some large retailers have seen record sales this year as consumers, locked in their homes, stocked up on supplies. products.

Walmart and Amazon could have quadrupled the risk premium given their workers and made even more than last year, according to a study by Brookings, a liberal-leaning nonprofit public policy group.

United For Respect, a non-profit group focused on the rights of retail workers, on Friday rejected Walmart’s latest bounties as a ploy to deflect calls for the risk bounty to continue during the public health crisis .

The extra cash offered by the company is like a “band-aid on a gunshot wound as frontline associates, warehouse workers, delivery drivers and more deal with pandemic and vacation rush , head on, “Cynthia Murray, 20, a Walmart employee and United for Respect executive, said in a statement released by the group.