Apparel retailer Gap Inc. said Wednesday it would raise the hourly pay for its U.S. employees to $9 in June and $10 in June 2015, after the White House said the minimum wage for federal contract workers would be raised to $10.10 an hour. 
 
 President Barack Obama signed an executive order last week to raise the minimum wage for federal contract workers to $10.10 an hour starting Jan. 1, 2015, and encouraged employers nationwide to increase wages for their workers. 
 
 Gap Inc. says it will raise hourly wages for employees to $9 in June, and to $10 in June 2015. The move is expected to affect about 65,000 store workers. Alex Brandon / AP 
 
 Gap, owner of Old Navy, Banana Republic, Gap, Athleta and Piperlime apparel chains, said the increased pay will benefit about 65,000 store employees. It said "the majority" of employees in stores, call centers and distribution centers currently earn more than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. 
 
 "To us, this is not a political issue," said Gap Chairman and CEO Glenn Murphy. "Our decision to invest in frontline employees will directly support our business, and is one that we expect to deliver a return many times over." 
 
 Meanwhile, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the largest private employer in the United States, said Wednesday it was "looking at supporting" an increase in the federal minimum wage, Bloomberg reported, citing a company spokesman. 
 
 -Reuters and NBC News staff ||||| (Reuters) - Apparel retailer Gap Inc (GPS.N) said it would raise the hourly pay for its U.S. employees to $9 in June 2014 and $10 in June 2015, after the White House said the minimum wage for federal contract workers would be raised to $10.10 an hour in 2015. 
 
 Gap, owner of Old Navy, Banana Republic and Gap apparel chains, said the increased pay will benefit about 65,000 store employees. 
 
 "I applaud Gap for announcing that they intend to raise wages for their employees beginning this year," U.S. President Barack Obama said. 
 
 Separately, Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N), the largest private employer in the United States, said it remains "neutral" on the issue of the federal minimum wage order of at least $10.10 per hour as it already pays most full-time employees above that level. 
 
 "We are looking into the impact that this proposal will be on our business," Wal-Mart spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan told Reuters on Wednesday. "We remain neutral. Our position has not changed." 
 
 She said an earlier Bloomberg report that the world's largest retailer was "looking at supporting" an increase in the federal minimum wage was inaccurate. (link.reuters.com/hej96v) 
 
 "Wal-Mart is not a minimum wage business. Ninety-nine percent of our hourly associates, people working in stores earn above the state and federal wage," Buchanan said. 
 
 Obama said last week he would sign an executive order to raise the minimum wage for federal contract workers starting next year. 
 
 The order applies to new contracts and replacements for expiring contracts. 
 
 Wal-Mart is expected to report fourth-quarter results on Thursday. 
 
 (Editing by Don Sebastian and Cynthia Osterman) ||||| Photo Advertisement Continue reading the main story Stories from Our Advertisers 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 BENTONVILLE, Ark. — When the weather gets sultry here at company headquarters, Walmart workers everywhere brace for an icy blast. 
 
 Because temperatures at Walmart stores across the United States are controlled remotely by the retailer’s centralized systems here, employees stock shelves and tend to customers under conditions that, by many accounts, tend to be on the chilly side from one city to another. 
 
 So at an employees’ rally held here on Wednesday ahead of the retail giant’s annual shareholders meeting this week, company executives made one of several concessions by agreeing to raise average store temperatures by 1 degree for the majority of Walmart locations. 
 
 From adjusting the air-conditioning to relaxing the dress code and even jazzing up a store’s music, the overtures — however small they seemed — are part of Walmart’s effort to project an image of a more caring employer. 
 
 A day earlier, Walmart, the country’s largest private sector employer, said that it would raise the starting hourly wage for more than 100,000 managers in the United States. That was the second wave of wage increases at Walmart this year, after it announced in February that it would raise the pay for a half-million entry-level store workers. 
 
 “I love to listen to you, I love hearing what’s working, what isn’t. I want to hear your ideas. I even like to hear your frustrations,” Greg Foran, the head of Walmart’s United States division, told about 3,000 store workers. 
 
 “Our job, my job, is to make your life easier,” Mr. Foran said. 
 
 Long a target of protests over low wages and rigid work schedules, Walmart is appearing to appease employees in the face of rising competition to hire and retain workers as the job market rebounds. Other retail chains, like Ikea and Gap, have also started to offer higher wages for store employees. 
 
 Walmart is also trying to cast off an image as an exploitative employer with an army of minimum-wage workers, some of whom reportedly depend on food stamps or other government aid. Now, after the latest wage increases, all Walmart workers make above the minimum wage, the retailer says. 
 
 Walmart also is trying to improve customer service as it struggles with sluggish sales at its supercenters and neighborhood markets. 
 
 Sales at stores open for a year or more grew by just 1.1 percent from a year earlier in the first quarter, though its performance over the last few quarters has improved slightly after a period of sales declines. 
 
 Not all workers were impressed with the changes. And not all of them were in Bentonville at the company’s invitation. 
 
 Cindy Murray was in town with the labor union affiliate, Our Walmart, to speak in support of a resolution the group will be presenting on behalf of an activist investor at Friday’s meeting that calls for giving shareholders the right to nominate board candidates. 
 
 Ms. Murray, who said she earned $13.20 as a fitting room clerk at a Walmart store in Laurel, Md., and struggled to pay her medical bills, said the retailer was skirting its workers’ most pressing concerns. 
 
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 “Anything Walmart does to makes life better for workers is awesome. But these changes are also basic things we need to do our jobs better and sell more,” she said. “Hire more workers and better pay — those are the biggest things. I think they should stop dancing round the boat.” 
 
 Kristin Oliver, Walmart’s executive vice president in charge of human resources, acknowledged that workers harbored remaining concerns, and said Walmart was working on more flexible scheduling. 
 
 She also said the company hoped that the combination of higher wages and friendlier policies would make its work force less transitory, and more likely to build careers with the retailer. 
 
 “What we’ve seen in the last few years is people jumping for small wage increases. People will move from one retailer to another for 25 cents an hour,” Ms. Oliver said. “What we hope is going to happen with the investments we’ve made is to slow that down.” 
 
 To entice workers to stay, Walmart on Wednesday announced a number of other changes to its employee policies. 
 
 The retailer will ease a much-criticized dress code that had required store workers, even those in physically intensive jobs, to wear shirts, vests and khakis. Now, stockers and other back-of-store workers will be allowed to wear jeans and T-shirts. Service-oriented workers will also be able to expand their choice of pants to black or khaki-colored denim. 
 
 On special occasions, like days with sporting events or seasonal holidays, workers will be invited to wear team jerseys, ugly Christmas sweaters or pink shirts to support breast cancer awareness, said Deisha Barnett, a Walmart spokeswoman. 
 
 The retailer also said it was bringing back an in-store broadcasting service called Walmart Radio, with a D.J. who broadcasts music to stores, to address numerous complaints from workers about having to listen to the same Justin Bieber and Celine Dion albums all day. 
 
 And temperatures at stores in the East and central regions will rise to 75 degrees from 74. (In stores in the West, average temperatures will fall from 76 to 75.) 
 
 To acknowledge employees’ complaints, executives at the rally used an imaginary Walmart worker, a puppet they called Willy Sellmore, who offered a surprisingly frank take on the retailer’s policies. When an executive explained that the temperature changes had been discussed for a year, Willy appeared understandably baffled. 
 
 “A year? A year? How long does it take to adjust a thermostat?” he said. “This shouldn’t be so hard.”
– Gap is staying a step ahead of moves to raise the minimum wage by setting $9 as its minimum wage this summer and raising it to $10 in 2015. The company says the move will affect around 65,000 workers at its stores, which include Old Navy and Banana Republic, NBC reports. President Obama—who wants to bring the minimum wage up from $7.25 to $10.10—applauded the move, which Gap CEO Glenn Murphy described as one that will "directly support our business, and is one that we expect to deliver a return many times over. The chief of the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union said Gap's move was a step in the right direction, but the biggest problem facing retail workers these days is the struggle to work enough hours to earn a good living. To reduce employee turnover, Gap and other retailers should "give these workers full-time jobs and regular schedules that don’t change week to week," he tells the New York Times. Meanwhile, Walmart—America's biggest employer—denied earlier reports that it was looking at supporting a rise in the federal minimum wage, saying it was "neutral" on the issue and already pays most of its full-time employees more than $10 an hour, Reuters reports.