Walmart will give its 1.5 million workers across the U.S. a fourth financial bonus later this month for working during the pandemic as COVID-19 cases soar.
The world’s largest retailer will make $300 cash payments to full-time employees and $150 to part-time workers on Dec. 24 “in recognition of associates’ sustained commitment to customers during the pandemic,” Walmart said in a statement.
Walmart has spent more than $2.8 billion on extra pay since the coronavirus hit, the company said.
Walmart Canada on Friday said its 85,000 workers would get a bonus December 11, with $250 coming to full-time associates and $150 to part-time workers. In March, they received bonuses of $200 and $100, respectively.
The moves come a week after Amazon said it would spend more than $500 million on bonuses for frontline workers to recognize their efforts during the holiday season.
Like Walmart, Amazon is giving full-time workers $300 and part-time employees $150 so long as they are employed at the company for all of December. The payments follow one-time bonuses of as much as $500 in June.
Both companies, along with other major retailers, have drawn fire for ending so-called hazard pay for employees who have continued to work during the pandemic.
Labor advocates say frontline workers remain potentially at risk from COVID-19 and deserve additional compensation They also note that some large retailers have booked record sales this year as consumers, holed up at home, stocked up on goods.
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Walmart and Amazon could have quadrupled the hazard pay given their workers and still earned a bigger profit than last year, according to research by Brookings, a liberal-leaning nonprofit public policy group.
United For Respect, a nonprofit group focused on the rights of retail workers, on Friday dismissed Walmart’s latest bonuses as a ploy to deflect calls for continued hazard pay during the public health crisis.
The extra cash offered by the company is like a “band-aid on a bullet wound as frontline retail associates, warehouse workers, delivery drivers and others face the pandemic and the holiday rush, head-on,” Cynthia Murray, a 20-year Walmart employee and United for Respect leader, said in a statement issued by the group.