How Gap’s Minimum Wage Pledge Is Already Paying Off

Gap Inc. CEO Glenn Murphy shook up the retail world this week by announcing that the retailer would voluntarily raise its corporate-wide minimum wage to $9 this year and to $10 in 2015. Explaining the decision to employees and the public on Wednesday, Murphy said such a “strategic investment” would better the lives of Gap workers while delivering the company “a return many times over” through higher productivity and morale. A day later, Murphy’s move is producing dividends of a different sort. Labor groups that have spent months beating up Gap over its handling of garment factory disasters in Bangladesh are now hailing the company as a leader for raising workers’ wages without being forced by Congress. “Gap’s decision exposes the greatest economic fraud of our time: that large employers cannot pay their employees fair wages,” Richard Trumka, head of the AFL-CIO labor federation, said in a statement Thursday. “With one decision, The Gap has stripped the oligarch of his clothes and changed the economic debate in America.” While adding that Gap has “more work to do” in the U.S. and overseas, Trumka declared the minimum wage move “a turning point” for the company. After being petitioned by progressives over its supply-chain labor policies, Gap has suddenly become a high-road employer in the minimum wage debate — and has simultaneously distanced itself from Walmart, a company it’s been closely associated with in the public discussion over garment worker safety in Bangladesh. More…

News selected by Covalence | Country: Global | Company: Gap | Source: The Huffington Post