Dive Brief:
- After demanding higher pay, activists focused on Wal-Mart now want an employee discount for all food purchases, according to Bloomberg.
- For the world’s largest retailer, that could cost a pretty penny -- more than $400 million, Bloomberg estimates. Wal-Mart currently offers workers a 10% discount on everything it sells except the vast majority of food.
- Fruits, vegetables and some snacks are the lone food items included in the discount promotion, unless they’re on sale. That's not good enough, say activists who keep tabs on Wal-Mart employment policies.
Dive Insight:
“It is ridiculous,” Janet Sparks, a Wal-Mart employee in Baker, Louisiana, who’s been active in labor groups pushing for higher wages, told Bloomberg. “You can get a 10 percent discount on cat food, but if I buy tuna or chicken, I get no discount.”
Some Wal-Mart employees launched an online petition last week calling on the company to expand the discount, with nearly 13,000 signatures from employees so far.
For it's part, the massive retailer says the food discount does not score high on employee surveys, with other issues -- improved scheduling, for example -- being higher-ranked requested perks. “Wal-Mart is investing $2.7 billion dollars in its associates this year and next in higher wages, better training and more scheduling control,” Kory Lundberg, a spokesman for the Bentonville, Arkansas-based company, told Bloomberg.
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