Internet Truckstop Group, an Idaho-based company that owns a number of internet trucking logistic websites, is raising base pay for its employees to $15 an hour.
The company has 250 full- and part-time employees, about 110 of whom will get a raise because of the increase. Most average $11 to $12 hours currently.
CEO Scott Moscrip said the company, whose revenues have grown between 10 and 30 percent a year, was due for a pay increase. “We want our employees to be happy,” he told the Idaho Statesman. “We don’t want them to have to worry about making ends meet. We want to reward the folks who made us as successful as we are.”
It will also likely benefit the company. “We expect it will give us a bigger pool of people to pull from for new hires,” he said. The company will increase employees’ base pay to $20 an hour after they work for the company for two years in order to increase retention.
Internet Truckstop joins a growing list of companies that are voluntarily raising their minimum wages, although most have focused on increasing pay to $9 or $10 an hour. In 2014 The Gap announced its minimum wage would rise to $10, then Walmart increased base pay to $10, the owner of TJ Maxx and Marshall’s increased pay to at least $9, Target raised pay to $9, Ikea raised pay to $11.87, and McDonald’s increased pay to an average of $10 an hour at company-owned locations. Health insurer Aetna targeted a rate closer to Internet Truckstop’s when it raised its minimum wages to $16 an hour.
Many of these companies have explicitly said that raising pay will bring — or has already brought — financial benefits, such as reduced turnover and a higher-quality pool of job applicants. This bears out research that has found that increased wages lower turnover, increase recruitment, and improve employee performance. Those kinds of benefits could help low-wage employers, such as those in fast food, absorb a $15 minimum wage.
And that’s the level that low-wage workers have been demanding for years now. Walmart and fast food employees have staged repeated strikes calling for that base pay and the right to form a union, and the call has also been taken up by adjunct professors and home health aides. Some local governments — the cities of San Francisco, Seattle, and Los Angeles — have all increased their minimum wages to that level, while Emeryville, CA has passed a $16 minimum wage.