Charter says it is now paying all its employees at least $15 per hour, fulfilling a commitment it made last February.
Given that the promise last February was to do so within a year, the cable/broadband operator is ahead of schedule. Citing the tax reform legislation that lowered corporate taxes--with that money billed by the Trump Administration as making its way back to employees--and the FCC's network neutrality reg rollback, Charter CEO Tom Rutledge said Friday (Feb. 2) that the company was instituting a $15-per-hour minimum wage across the board by the end of the year.
The minimum wage applies to approximately 14,000 people, meaning all 97,000 employees now make at least that amount per hour. Charter says the majority of its employees are call center reps, field technicians and Spectrum store staff, all customer facing positions.
"We chose to make this investment in our workforce specifically because it would directly impact the employees who are closest to our customers. These members of our team are the face of Charter, interacting with thousands of people every day," said Charter. "Raising our minimum wage will enable us to better attract, train and retain the highly-skilled, diverse workforce we want and need to serve our customers, and meet our goal of hiring over 20,000 employees by 2020," Charter added."
With the resources and investment confidence resulting from historic tax reform legislation and the FCC’s removal of the 1930’s era regulatory framework for internet service, Charter is increasing our investment in our workforce," Rutledge said back in February. "Raising our minimum wage is the right thing to do for our employees and our company."
ISPs have argued that Title II-based net neutrality regulations depressed investment including in their workforce. One knock on the tax cuts that Charter's minimum wage move addresses was the criticism that the savings would not be passed along beyond one-time bonuses that had been announced by a number of companies.
