Bernie Sanders confronts Walmart bosses and urges $15 an hour minimum wage
Bernie Sanders brought his years-long crusade against Walmart to the company’s annual shareholders meeting in Arkansas on Wednesday, demanding the nation’s largest retailer raise its wages and put workers on its board.
Sanders, who has once again made income inequality a central theme of his presidential campaign, confronted Walmart executives at the brief gathering, where he made the case for a proposal that would add hourly workers to the company’s corporate board and raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour.
“Walmart can strike a blow against corporate greed and a grotesque level of income and wealth inequality that exists in our country,” Sanders said in his three-minute remarks at the meeting, held in Rogers, Arkansas. “Please do the right thing.”
Sanders, who in the 2020 election is making his second attempt to become the Democratic nominee for president, attended the meeting as proxy for Carolyn “Cat” Davis, a Walmart employee and labor activist who is a member of the labor advocacy group, United for Respect.
The proposal along with a separate resolution introduced by an employee that sought to strengthen Walmart’s sexual harassment policies were overwhelmingly defeated in a shareholder vote later that afternoon.
In his remarks, Sanders pointedly criticized Walmart’s leadership, singling out the Walton family, which founded the company and is collectively the wealthiest family in the US, as well as the retailer’s CEO, Doug McMillon, who welcomed the senator to the meeting in his opening remarks.
“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. “Frankly, the American people are sick and tired of subsidizing the greed of some of the largest and most profitable corporations in this country.”
He added that McMillon earned
more than $20m in 2018, which is roughly a thousand times more than the average salary earned by Walmart’s employees.
Before Sanders spoke, McMillon defended Walmart, touting the company’s decision to raise its minimum wage to $11 per hour and to provide benefits such as advanced job training and paid time off. Walmart has said it pays an average of $17.50 an hour to its hourly employees, including benefits.
“We are not perfect, but together we are listening, learning and changing,” he said, taking an opportunity to urge Congress to pass a “thoughtful plan” to raise the federal minimum wage.
Walmart, which is based in Bentonville, Arkansas, employs nearly 1.5 million people and is the largest privatesector employer in the US.
Sanders attended the company’s formal business meeting on Wednesday, which lasted just over 25 minutes. In a few days, Walmart will hold its annual shareholder celebration, which draws thousands of employees and features celebrities and live performances.
Still, the shareholders’ meeting offered Sanders a high-profile platform to demonstrate his solidarity with the workers he hopes will help him capture the nomination, which he lost to Hillary Clinton in 2016. After the meeting, Sanders announced that he would join McDonald’s workers at a rally to raise the minimum wage in Iowa this weekend.
In 2018, Sanders introduced the Stop Walmart Act, that would have blocked large companies from buying back stocks unless they paid employees at least $15 an hour, provided workers with paid sick leave and limited CEO compensation.
Walmart has raised its minimum wage twice since 2016 to $11 an hour. But it remains lower than rivals such as Amazon, Target and Costco.