Walmart Inc yesterday said that it has temporarily raised entry wages for workers in its e-commerce warehouses by US$2, following similar moves by rivals, as it attempts to manage a shopping surge brought about by the COVID-19 outbreak.
The hike would increase entry wages for workers in e-commerce fulfillment centers or warehouses to between US$15 and US$19 an hour effective immediately through May 25, Walmart said.
The world’s largest retailer, which employs 1.5 million people in the US, has struggled to keep store shelves stocked and fulfill online orders amid panic buying by shoppers spooked by the outbreak.
Photo: AP
The virus has infected more than 32,000 people in the US leading to more than 415 deaths, a Reuters tally showed.
Walmart last week said that it would pay special cash bonuses totaling US$550 million to hourly staff and hire 150,000 temporary workers through the end of May in its stores and fulfillment centers.
Workers in distribution centers, which primarily help stock stores, start at US$17 to US$18 an hour. The starting wage for store workers in most locations remains US$11 an hour, with the average wage among full-time hourly workers at US$14.26.
Rivals such as Amazon.com Inc and Target Corp have also boosted pay and gone on a hiring spree to manage a surge in orders while many clothing and mall-based retailers have been forced to shut stores.
Amazon hiked entry wages to US$17 from US$15 and announced plans to hire 100,000 warehouse and delivery workers in the US.
On Saturday, it said that it would raise overtime pay for associates working in its US warehouses.
Target last week said that it would raise its minimum wage by US$2 an hour for store and distribution center workers through May 2.
Walmart officials on Thursday said that they had reached out to industry groups representing hotels and restaurants, offering to hire staff who have recently lost their jobs due to the virus-induced slowdown in tourism and catering.
Yesterday, the company said that new employees could begin work at its facilities in as little as 24 hours after being hired.
It is also offering new hires and current workers a US$250 cash bonus for each new hire referral after 90 days from the new hire’s start.
On Sunday, the retailer said that it has set up federal drive-through coronavirus testing sites in the parking lots of two stores in Illinois.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts