Amazon will pay all of its U.S. workers a minimum of $15 an hour, more than double the federal base pay of $7.25. The retail giant, run by the world’s richest male, was criticized earlier this year after exposing its workers’ typical pay was $28,446. Amazon says the brand-new rate will go into impact on Nov. 1, covering all of its full-time, part-time, short-term and seasonal staff members in the U.S. “We listened to our critics, concentrated about what we wished to do, and decided we desire to lead,” stated Amazon’s founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, as the company revealed the new pay scale Tuesday. “We’re delighted about this change and encourage our rivals and other big employers to join us.” In another change, Amazon will phase out its Restricted Stock System program for order fulfillment and customer support staff members who are paid hourly. Those employees presently receive shares of stock if they meet certain conditions. The company says the workers have said “they choose the predictability and immediacy of money to RSUs.” For those hourly employees, Amazon prepares to change its RSU grant program with a direct stock purchase plan by the end of 2019. The net result, the business states, will indicate “significantly more total payment” for the workers. At the brand-new pay rate, an Amazon worker who makes the new minimum wage would need to work more than 3 weeks (133 hours) to purchase one share of the company’s stock, which presently sits above $2,000. Which’s prior to taxes and other expenses are taken into consideration. The corporation revealed its average pay this past spring, under a brand-new law that needs business to report the profits gap between their CEOs and their regular employees. As Bloomberg News reported in April, “Amazon is now the second-largest private employer in the U.S. behind Walmart Inc.” [Disclosure: Amazon is also amongst NPR’s financial fans.] After the $28,446 figure drew criticism from Sen. Bernie Sanders and others, Amazon stressed that the number reflects its staff members’ pay worldwide; the mean wage for a full-time worker in the U.S., the company said, is $34,123– a figure it said need to be compared to other sellers. Amazon’s market capitalization presently stands near $1 trillion; it paid Bezos, its founder and CEO, $1.68 million in 2015. As Amazon’s stock has increased, so has Bezos’ net worth– it’s currently estimated around $165 billion. Those gains was available in the exact same year that a variety of Amazon’s workers were found to be counting on the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program– SNAP– which up until just recently was commonly called food stamps. That revelation came from The Intercept, which reported that in four out of the 5 states that offered information, Amazon was one of the leading employers of BREEZE receivers. The new base pay for Amazon workers far surpasses the $7.25 federal minimum pay; Amazon says it will set the mark for more than 250,000 current staff members, as well as more than 100,000 seasonal employees it plans to employ for the coming vacation season. In addition to committing to greater minimum pay, Amazon says it will “work with policymakers in Washington, D.C., to advocate for a greater federal minimum wage.” The federally mandated minimum pay hasn’t increased because 2009. And in that time, the rate “has lost about 9.6 percent of its acquiring power to inflation,” the Bench Proving ground stated last year. From state to state, the base pay varies commonly. In 29 states and Washington, D.C., it’s higher than the federal rate. But in two states (Georgia and Wyoming), it’s lower, at $5.15. And 5 states have laws that do not need a minimum wage at all, according to the Department of Labor. Amazon’s brand-new pay rate consists of workers who are worked with through temperature companies and subsidiaries in the U.S. The business has more than 575,000 employees worldwide. Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.