Bernie Sanders invites Amazon, Walmart CEOs to town hall with workers

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Thursday invited the CEOs of four major American companies to participate in a town hall event with their employees in Washington D.C. next month. 

“I really hope (the CEOs) have the guts to sit on a panel with their own employees and explain why it’s acceptable that they receive huge compensation packages while their very own workers are struggling to put food on the table,” Sanders told CNN. “I hope they have the courage to do so. The invitation is sincere.” 

The Vermont senator sent invitations to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook and Disney’s CEO Bob Iger. 

{mosads}”My staff and I have spoken with Disney workers who are hungry, homeless, or struggling to make ends meet,” Sanders said in his letter to Iger, later quoting an employee who said they are unable to afford three meals a day on their current salary.

“I eat cans of tuna or celery sticks and carrots because that’s what I can afford,” Sanders quoted the employee saying in the letter.

“It is beyond belief,” Sanders said Wednesday, “that a company like Disney, when they made $9 billion in profits last year, that you have working people there (at Disneyland), who walk around and they’re in Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse costumes, or serve food, who literally don’t have enough money to pay their rent.” 

Sanders’s livestreamed town hall is scheduled to take place on July 16 and will be presented in partnership with news outlets and progressive groups including NowThis, The Young Turks, The Guardian, The Nation magazine and MoveOn.

Read the letter to Bezos, here, McMillon, here, Easterbrook, here, and Iger, here.