Charter Communications, which owns Spectrum, boosts its minimum wage to $20 per hour
Charter Communications, the telecommunications company that owns Spectrum, is raising its minimum wage to $20 per hour over the next two years for all of its employees, the company said Monday.
The cable company joins a string of other companies with employees in customer-facing positions to raise wages during the coronavirus pandemic. Companies like Amazon, Target, Lowe’s and others have all raised wages for employees that have been asked to keep working through the coronavirus.
While the overall wage increase will be done over two years, Charter said there will be an initial raise given to frontline field technicians and customer service call center workers. The will all receive an immediate $1.50 per hour raise regardless of what they currently make.
“Because of the important work we do, there will continue to be crises we will face, including hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, fires, and ice storms for as long as we are in business,” Charter CEO Tom Rutledge said in an email to employees. “We keep people connected no matter what. It’s the obligation we have to the communities we serve.”
Charter said its employees have been working around the clock during the COVID-19 outbreak, helping maintain internet connections while many are forced to work from home. The company said it is not currently terminating service for residential or small business customers who have faced economic hits during COVID-19 stay-at-home orders.
It’s also giving employees an additional three weeks of flexible paid time off to be used for any COVID-19 related illness.
Charter said the raise will be permanent. Some other companies, like Amazon and Target, have said their raises are temporary. The company said it had recently begun discussions about raising its existing minimum wage of $15 — but the current outbreak of the coronavirus sped up the process.
Charter offers services like Spectrum TV, Spectrum Internet, Spectrum Voice and Spectrum Mobile across the state of North Carolina. The company said it didn’t have numbers to share about how many employees it has in North Carolina. It also has a cable news channel in North Carolina.
Charter is the second biggest broadband provider in the country. In 2016, it bought Time Warner Cable for $60 billion.
This story was produced with financial support from a coalition of partners led by Innovate Raleigh as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work. Learn more; go to bit.ly/newsinnovate
This story was originally published April 6, 2020 at 3:46 PM.
