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Friday’s business headlines

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) – Here’s a look at Friday’s business headlines.

Walmart

Walmart hikes hourly pay by $1 for more than 550,000 workers ahead of the holidays.

Employees who work on the front end of Walmart stores and in its food, consumable and general merchandise departments will receive the higher wages, which will be effective Sept. 25.

The retail industry faces a tight labor market as it prepares to staff up for the holidays.

Guns

Gunmaker Smith & Wesson says record sales have depleted internal inventories to well below pre-pandemic levels.

Smith & Wesson’s inventory has been drawn down as firearm sales in the U.S. have boomed since the early days of the pandemic due to an increase in socially distant outdoor activities and as people sought protection from the social unrest that followed the death of George Floyd in May 2020.

Tyson

Two of the industry’s biggest poultry companies have agreed to pay nearly $35 million to settle a lawsuit that accused them and several other firms of conspiring to dominate the industry and fix the prices paid to farmers who raise chickens.

The lawsuit that Alabama farmers filed in Oklahoma federal court against Tyson and Perdue alleges that the contract grower system the meat companies created pushed them deep into debt to build and maintain chicken barns that met company standards.

Corteva

Corteva will use Plant Lab’s satellite imaging products to get more data that’s key to boosting crop health and productivity.

The companies signed a three=-year agreement that will allow the companies to scale up their collection of so-called precision farming data using Planet’s latest technology.