Companies Celebrate Tax Reform w/$1,000 Bonuses, Minimum Wage Hikes
Tax reform was supposed to kill everyone. (Or was that withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accords, the Iran Deal and DOJ's police lynch mob, I forget.) So far it's killing them with bonuses.
Once tax reform is signed into law, AT&T* plans to invest an additional $1 billion in the United States in 2018 and pay a special $1,000 bonus to more than 200,000 AT&T U.S. employees — all union-represented, non-management and front-line managers. If the President signs the bill before Christmas, employees will receive the bonus over the holidays.
Since 2012, AT&T has invested more in the United States than any other public company. Every $1 billion in capital invested in the telecom industry creates about 7,000 jobs for American workers, research shows.
Comcast has promised $1,000 bonuses to 100,000 employees and $50 billion in spending. Boeing is spending $300 million on various things. Wells Fargo and Bancorp are raising the minimum wage.
Fifth Third Bancorp will pay more than 13,500 employees a bonus and raise the minimum wage of its workforce to $15 an hour after the passage of the Republican tax plan that will cut the bank's corporate tax rate.
Wells Fargo, meanwhile, also said it would be boosting its minimum wage for employees to $15 an hour, which was prompted by the tax plan. The San Francisco-based bank also said it would target $400 million in donations to community and nonprofit organizations next year.
Cincinnati-based Fifth Third, the fifteenth largest U.S. bank by asset size, said the tax cut allowed it to re-evaluate its employee pay and pass along some of the windfall. Nearly 3,000 workers will see hourly wages rise to $15. The $1,000 one-time bonus is expected to be paid by the end of this year, the bank said, assuming President Donald Trump signs the bill into law by Christmas.
Obama's policy led to massive job and wage losses. The various mandatory minimum wage schemes turned full time jobs into part time jobs. But Republicans have managed to raise minimum wages naturally instead of punitively.