Furniture and home décor giant Ikea has announced it will raise the minimum wage for its American workers based on the cost of living, not on market conditions, in an effort to invest in its employees.
“This stems back to Ikea’s decision to create a better everyday life for our people,” said Rob Olson, Ikea’s acting president for the United States and its chief financial officer,
The New York Times reported. “We are of course investing in our co-workers. We believe they will invest in our customers, and they will invest in Ikea’s stores. We believe that it will be a win-win-win for our co-workers, our customers, and our stores.”
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The company said the new average minimum wage will be $10.76 an hour, $3.51 above the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Actual wages will range between $8.69 to $13.22.
The company said the wage increases for about half of its 13,120 employees will be determined using the M.I.T. Living Wage Calculator and depending on where the stores are located across the country.
Ikea says the 17 percent wage hike won’t increase product prices in the company’s 38 U.S. stores.
“Ikea is probably realizing that it’s hard to get the best out of their employees if their employees don’t earn enough to live on,” Zeynep Ton, a professor at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management, told the Times.
Twitter responded positively to Ikea's announcement.
Gap Inc. announced in February that it would set a $9 per hour minimum wage for its workers this year and a $10 per hour minimum in 2015.
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