At Walmart Academy, Training Better Managers. But With a Better Future?

The procession started in toys, marched through electronics, down into grocery and past the registers at the front end.

Fifty-one men and women, dressed in shimmering blue and yellow caps and gowns, walked through the Walmart to receive certificates on a stage set up in the store’s lawn and garden department. A bagpiper, wearing a kilt, led the graduates through the aisles.

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“If Walmart really wanted to invest in its workers, it would start people at $15 companywide and adequately staff its stores so they can service customers,” said Judy Conti, federal advocacy coordinator for the National Employment Law Project, which lobbies for low-wage workers.

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As the procession made its way through the aisles and the bagpiper played, Ms. VanHorn spotted her father, sitting on a folding chair in the lawn and garden section.

After the ceremony, he told Ms. VanHorn he was proud of her.

“This was not the dream,” she said. “But the dream does change.”

Read the full article in the New York Times.