They aren't doing it for the economy they are doing it because their sales were sliding as a result of poor customer experience. They realized that their focus on lowest possible labor cost left them in a position where they were getting the least ambitious bottom of the barrel labor. So they hypothesized that by training people in basic retail concepts, like how to stock a shelve to be visually attractive, offering people an above minimum wage and a path to better opportunities within the company that they could have a better trained workforce and better retain those people.
It's more a way to try to quell incipient union action. They've closed several stores in order to head off strike action already (which is expensive) and it failed.
