Walmart Offers To Foot College Tuition Bills for US Employees (bloomberg.com)

Walmart will begin offering to subsidize college tuition for its 1.5 million workers in the United States, joining a growing list of companies that are helping employees pay for higher education as a perk in a tight labor market. From a report: The retailer's 1.5 million employees can now pursue associate's or bachelor's degrees in business or supply-chain management at three nonprofit schools for $1 a day, according to a statement Wednesday. Walmart will subsidize tuition, books and fees and provide support with the application and enrollment processes. As many as 68,000 employees might sign up, Walmart executives estimated. "Many of our associates don't have the opportunity to complete a degree," said Drew Holler, Walmart's U.S. vice president of people innovation, in an interview. "We felt strongly that this is something that would improve their lives and help us run a better business." The tuition program -- offered to part-time staff as well as full-timers -- is the latest move by Walmart to improve employee retention and engagement. A handful of other companies, including Starbucks and Amazon, also offer tuition support.

Comments

Re:How about a living wage instead?

[bluefoxlucid]

WalMart makes their entire business on low prices, at a 3% profit margin (impressive). They've said they're neutral in minimum wage; they seem to support it, some say because a higher minimum wage will crush WalMart's small competitors.

Higher wages will inevitably lead to higher prices. It's not by much, but it's there. A $2 raise is about a 10% price increase on average--$20 pants become $22 pants--and they don't want everyone running to Target, causing loss of WalMart jobs, gain of Target jobs, and disruption for working families.

A minimum wage increase would cause a wage increase at WalMart and Target, causing the associated price increases. Structurally, nothing changes: WalMart still has lower prices, even if those prices are slightly-higher. Any impoverished Target employees shopping at WalMart are still shopping at WalMart, are better-paid, are paid more than enough to offset the price increases themselves, and so funnel more money into WalMart (so they can keep their same profit margin without as much of a price increase). WalMart gets richer.

It's WalMart's 3% NOP that gets me. That's insanely-low; it's impressive, to say the least. Adidas Shoes has 5%; about 8% is reasonable, just by being a common baseline; Comcast usually has 11%; and Microsoft and Apple hold above 20% NOP. I support a fair corporate income tax with a higher tax rate when the corporation's NOP is above reasonable levels; that generally means WalMart gets a tax cut and Apple gets to pay 48%. I don't honestly have a problem with this.

Re:How about a living wage instead?

[bobbied]

Living pay check to pay check isn't about how much money you bring in, but about how much you are spending in most cases.

It's more about managing what you spend to match what you take in than making more money. Usually more money doesn't help people who live paycheck to paycheck, it just allows them to dig a deeper hole. If you are struggling to service unsecured debt, you likely have a spending problem. If you find that a raise only puts you deeper in debt, your problem is spending, not earnings.

In today's day and age, in most places in the USA we are rapidly approaching full employment. This means it's a seller's market in labor. So if you don't make enough, get a better job. If you cannot get a better job, develop better skills and try again. So if you *really* need more money, you can get it by working hard, but if you don't control your debt load, it won't change a thing to earn more.

Did you get this from a right wing think tank

[rsilvergun]

or do you work for one and wrote it yourself? This is one of their talking points. It's always the same: We can't raise your pay because somebody else will just take it away if we do. Maybe it's the gov't. Maybe it's the businesses you shop at (funny that for Walmart employees).

It's a lie. No, employees making $15/hr don't pay 40% of their income in taxes. Even at $15/hr (the living wage as of 2018, though it's going to have to be raised soon) you pay about 15-20%. Less if you have kids. I know, I made that kind of money for years before getting a better job.

Tuition assistance is fine and dandy, but it's no substitute for a living wage. People need to live while they go to school, and it's unreasonable to expect people who couldn't make it through college in their teens & 20s to do it while working for a living in their 30s, 40s or 50s. Sure, some people have done it but they're outliers. You're being disingenuous at best and a right wing, anti-worker shill at worst.