Which coincides with state and local minimum wage increases; see http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/29/news/economy/2018-minimum-wa.... More increases are coming; several states are phasing in increases over multiple years. They're just getting ahead of the minimum wage increases and trying to get good PR out of it ("no, we didn't do this because we were forced to, we did it because we love our workers. cut our taxes more!").
Imagine if personal income taxes were drastically lowered instead? then, walmart could keep the same pay, but ALL its customers (not just its employees) now have more take home pay to spend at walmart.
That's intentionally context dropping by Think Progress.
Walmart's Sam's Club business is not doing well in competition with Costco. It hasn't been doing very well for years now. You'll notice the Think Progress article avoids any discussion of the context of the Sam's Club business from which the workers were fired.
Here's the hint: Sam's Club closed 63 locations. Do you think they did that to save money on the workers? They didn't just fire workers at the locations, they closed 63 locations.