Kudos to Fred for breaking this story first.

Walmart quietly lays off thousands of workers after bonus announcement

Workers across the country were not told of the closings and showed up to work to find stores shuttered.



Thursday morning, Walmart had a flashy announcement: Thanks to corporate tax cuts, it was giving its employees bonuses of up to $1,000. Walmart and President Trump pointed to the announcement as proof that the corporate tax cuts are really a boon to working-class Americans.

This announcement, as ThinkProgress reported earlier, was much more complicated than it first sounds.

Walmart employees are eligible for the $1,000 bonus only if they’ve worked at the company for 20 years. Most Walmart employees, of course, haven’t worked there that long. Those employees will receive a smaller bonus based on seniority. Walmart didn’t explain exactly how the sliding scale will work, but said the total value of the bonuses will be $400 million. Walmart has about 2.1 million employees, which works out to be an average bonus of about $190.

The one-time bonus Walmart announced this morning amounts to just over 2 percent of the total value of the tax cut to the company.

But now it appears the announcement was timed carefully to cover for thousands of unannounced layoffs.

Business Insider reports that today, Walmart is abruptly closing numerous Sam’s Clubs stores across the United States. In some cases “employees were not informed of the closures prior to showing up to work on Thursday” and “learned that their store would be closing when they found the store’s doors locked and a notice announcing the closure.”