Walmart shareholders reject Sanders-backed proposal to put workers on board

Walmart shareholders on Wednesday voted down a proposal backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to put company workers on its board of directors, according to CNN.

The 2020 presidential candidate, speaking as a proxy for Walmart employees, offered the resolution earlier in the day at the shareholders meeting, saying, “The concerns of workers, not just stockholders, should be a part of board decisions.”

Sanders told CNN after the vote that he didn’t think CEO Doug McMillon had gotten the message.

{mosads}”I feel like if he got the message, what he would say is, ‘We are going to do what many of our competitors are doing—- what Amazon has already done, Costco, what Target is moving toward — and raise that minimum wage to 15 bucks an hour,’” Sanders told the network.

McMillon has called on Congress to raise the federal minimum wage, which is at $7.25 an hour. Sanders on Wednesday said that was “fine,” but he added that Walmart needs “to take a bold step forward and say all of their employees should live with dignity.”

Sanders reintroduced legislation hiking the minimum wage in the Senate this year. The measure has 31 Democratic co-sponsors, including Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.).

The House version, introduced by Education and Labor Committee Chairman Bobby Scott (D-Va.), has more than 200 co-sponsors.

Pat Copp, a Walmart shareholder, told CNN before the meeting that she was opposed to Sanders’s “philosophies or thoughts, whatever you want to call them,” but added that she was not opposed to his proposal to give workers a voice on the board.

“I don’t know how large the board is, but to have input from the workers in some way — I think that would be good,” she said, according to the network. “A lot of time top management is so removed from the ground level, they really don’t know what’s going on.”