[V]ermont senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders made a pit stop in Arkansas Wednesday to crash Walmart’s annual shareholders meeting and pressure the mega-retailer to give its employees a $15 an hour minimum wage.
During the shareholders meeting, Sanders stood and urged the company to adopt a proposal to give employees a voice on the company’s board and the power to influence decision making.
“Walmart can afford to pay its employees a living wage of at least $15 an hour,” Sanders told the Walmart board members. “Further, Walmart should give a voice to its workers by allowing them seats on the board of directors. The concerns of workers, not just stockholders, should be part of board decisions.”
The policy, filed by Walmart employee Cat Davis, who is also a leading member for the workers’ rights organization United for Respect, says that Walmart is one of the largest employers of women and minorities in the country and that its hourly wage for full-time employees is so low that many workers cannot survive.
“Walmart’s pay is so low that a full-time Associate (at 34 hours a week, Walmart’s definition of full-time) earning Walmart’s starting wage can still fall below the federal poverty line for a family of three,” Davis writes in the proposal.
Rachel Brand, Walmart’s executive vice president of global governance, chief legal officer and corporate secretary, swiftly dismissed the proposal, according to Politico.
“Thank you, Sen. Sanders, for your presentation and your viewpoint,” Brand said before saying the board does not support the plan.
Sanders, who has been busy visiting early primary states to campaign for president, also spoke to groups of Walmart employees outside the shareholders meeting — there were some estimates that 16,000 workers would be attending — and continued to push for workers’ rights and for proposals to do away with income inequality.
Sanders has long railed against how the retailer — which employs almost 1.5 million Americans and is the largest private-sector employer in the country — and the Walton family, which owns the company, treat the employees.
In November last year, the Vermont senator introduced the “Stop Welfare for Any Large Monopoly Amassing Revenue from Taxpayers Act,” or Stop WALMART Act.
The legislation would ban companies from buying back their stocks — a practice that has increased since President Donald Trump’s business-incentivizing tax cuts were enacted — unless employees were paid at least $15 an hour and able to earn up to seven days of paid sick leave per year.
Sanders put the bill forward after he successfully pressured Jeff Bezos, the owner of the online-retail giant Amazon, to pay workers $15 per hour with a similar legislative proposal.
The Walton family, the wealthiest in the country, and Walmart have been slower to react to Sanders than Amazon, however.
Walmart raised its minimum wage to $11 an hour last year — up from $10 in 2017 and $9 in 2016. In February, Walmart announced it will allow employees to earn up to 48 hours of paid time off, well short of the 168 hours Sanders had been advocating.
“Despite the incredible wealth of its owner, Walmart pays many of its employees starvation wages, wages that are so low, that many of these employees are forced to rely on government programs like food stamps, Medicaid and public housing in order to survive,” Sanders said in Arkansas.
When Sanders announced he would be swinging through Arkansas to attend the shareholders meeting, Walmart officials said they hoped he would not be making it a campaign rally.
“We hope [Sanders] will approach his visit not as a campaign stop, but as a constructive opportunity to learn about the many ways we’re working to provide increased economic opportunity, mobility and benefits to our associates,” Randy Hargrove, a spokesperson for Walmart, told CNN on Monday.
