Report: Check the hours on that ‘24-hour’ Wal-Mart

Bentonville, Ark. – Shoppers who frequent 24-hour Wal-Mart locations may want to double-check the opening and closing times. According to Bloomberg, Wal-Mart will begin closing about forty 24-hour stores in areas including Philadelphia, New Jersey and Maryland for a few hours each night.



This expands upon the nighttime closures of about 25 other 24-hour Wal-Marts, which began earlier this year. Wal-Mart plans to use the downtime for activities such as stocking shelves and preparing store floors for customers.



While employees who had been working overnight shifts to perform tasks such as stocking and cleaning will not have their hours changed, overnight employees who performed customer-facing duties such as checkout will be offered new positions in the same store or other stores. Affected full-time employees who have had their job for more than a year will be eligible for severance.



In addition to fitting into Wal-Mart’s program to improve the store experience with features like better-stocked shelves, the closures could also provide benefits such as reduced shrinkage and also a reduction in the number of hours it pays employee wages. Wal-Mart is in the process of boosting the minimum wage it pays store associates.