Wage hike will pay off for Walmart: Your Say

Walmart announced last week that it will increase wages to $9 per hour for about 500,000 full- and part-time associates. Comments from Facebook are edited for clarity and grammar:

Good for Walmart. Costco is a leader in retail pay, and it has been wildly successful. Paying your employees poorly is not a recipe for loyalty, effort or retention. I think a good chunk of that extra wage will come back to Walmart anyway, in the form of sales to employees.

— Kanti Dinda

The economy is obviously improving. These are the last guys to want to give raises.

— Scott Barclay

Here's what I do not get. You sign on to work for an employer knowing fully what your pay is going to be, and then you complain you are not paid enough? Granted, it is one thing to work to get some extra pocket change, and another to support and raise a family.

You earn more pay with skill sets that deserve more pay. Flipping burgers deserves $15 an hour?

— Billaura Doucet

The biggest lie out there is that boosting the minimum wage makes better workers.

Walmart will use this public relations stunt to disproportionately raise prices to more than offset this pay hike, as corporations do.

— David Patterson

The Walmarts and "McBusinesses" of America are the true recipients of welfare and food stamps. Their payrolls are subsidized by the taxpayers who fund these government benefits.

— Ron Blood

Walmart is raising wages because the labor market is getting tighter. It competes for talent just like everyone else.

— Jeff Bates

We pay when these workers get raises. These are not supposed to be high-paying jobs.

— Paul Finney

Letter to the editor:

The front-page article Friday, "Walmart succumbs to pressure and will hike wages in April," was very poorly headlined and somewhat poorly written (News).

This reported wage change was suggested a year ago by the company's then-new CEO Doug McMillon. His interest and focus has been on improving customer service. The remonstrations of relatively few protesters (a number of whom were non-employees) should weigh little in Walmart's strategic thinking.

This article, so biased in its title, belonged on the editorial page, not the front page.

Richard J. Faleschini; Apollo Beach, Fla.