Walmart has announced that it will lay off thousands of workers across the country as it closes dozens of Sam's Club locations.
The announcement comes on the same day the retail giant announced it was raising its starting minimum wage for new employees to $11 an hour.
The company told Business Insider that 63 Sam's Club stores will close.
Some locations reportedly stopped business suddenly on Thursday without giving advance warning to employees.
Along with the higher minimum wage, Walmart announced earlier Thursday that it would expand parental leave and give some employees one-time bonuses of up to $1,000 following the passage of the GOP tax overhaul.
Well that last part's nice, you know for those Wal-Mart employees who managed to keep their jobs.
Ironically the announcement about the store closings only happened after Paul Ryan made these remarks:
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) praised Walmart's gesture to raise its employees' wages on Thursday, calling the tax bill a major help to middle-income families.
"Today marks 20 days since the Tax Cut and Jobs Act became the law of the land," Ryan said. "Already, this new law is helping to improve the lives of middle-income families across the country. You saw the announcement from Walmart just this morning: more than a million Americans are due to receive their bonuses because of tax reform."
You know if this weren't so damn pathetic it would almost be funny.
I first learned about this when I received a text yesterday informing me that all of the Alaska Sam's Club locations had suddenly locked their doors.
Courtesy of KTVA:
All Sam’s Club locations in Alaska are closing, as part of an unannounced nationwide rollback of the Walmart-owned wholesale club’s stores.
KTVA viewer Joe Gerace, owner of the Chevron gas station outside the Dimond Fred Meyer, said he visited an Anchorage Sam’s Club location for before-hours business shopping Thursday and found security officers turning customers away at the door.
Now personally I'm a Costco shopper so this does not directly affect me, but it does mean that suddenly there are a bunch of unemployed Alaskans looking for new jobs.
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