Costco to raise hourly pay, reaches tentative agreement with union
Costco is raising its pay to more than $30 an hour for hundreds of thousands of workers.
Clerks at the top of its pay scale will earn almost $32 an hour next month, per a CNN report, which noted that Costco, which employs 272,000 people across the United States and Canada — said its workers will soon receive hourly increases of 50 cents to one dollar.
"We believe our hourly wages and benefits will continue to far outpace others in the retail industry," Ron Vachris, CEO of Costco, informed employees of the raise in a memo, per the report.
Costco will pay top-of-the-scale clerks $31.90 an hour and top-of-the-scale assistants $30.20 an hour, starting in March. The latest version of a three-year employee agreement calls for two additional $1 hourly increases in March 2026 and March 2027, Costco said.
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Bottom-of-scale clerks and assistants are getting 50-cent hourly increases, making $21 and $20 per hour, respectively, the report said, adding that Costco also is adding vacation time for new employees during their first year, and giving workers with 30 years of employment an additional week of time off, providing six weeks in all.
The pay hikes comes as Costco and the Teamsters union reached a tentative agreement on a new contract, avoiding a strike, the union said Saturday, per an AP report.
The Teamsters union represents 18,000 Costco workers in six states: California, Washington, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey and New York. Overall, Costco has 219,000 U.S. employees and 617 U.S. stores. The company said its labor agreement with the Teamsters applies to less than 10% of those stores, per the AP report.
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On Jan. 20, Teamsters members at Costco voted overwhelmingly in favor of a strike if a new three-year contract agreement wasn’t reached by midnight Friday, when the current contract expired, the report noted.
