At its annual shareholder meeting Wednesday, voting members rejected shareholder initiatives related to employee safety and in-store violence, racial equity audits, human rights impact assessments and increasing base compensation.
The Walton family owns about 45 percent of the company’s shares, which makes passing shareholder resolutions without the company’s express interest in doing so a daunting task. Nonetheless, organizations like United for Respect (UFR), a labor group, and Oxfam America, a nonprofit focused on justice and poverty relief, continue to request shareholders’ consideration for action on diversity, equity and inclusion-focused initiatives.
UFR filed a proposal requesting that Walmart complete a third-party audit on racial equity inside the organization, which it said would analyze its “adverse impacts on Black Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) communities” and subsequently share recommendations to better Walmart’s racial equity impact.
The organization submitted the proposal last year, as well. In the 2023 annual shareholders’ meeting, that proposal received 18.1 percent of shareholder votes, Walmart’s records show. This year, support for the proposal dropped by nearly three percentage points, with 15.4 percent of voting shareholders in favor of it, according to Walmart.
Bianca Agustin, co-executive director for UFR, told Sourcing Journal earlier this year that the organization hoped it would garner at least 20 percent of shareholders’ votes. Generally, receiving one-fifth of shareholder votes causes a company to discuss an item like UFR’s in greater depth with the shareholder that proposed it.
TaNeka Hightower, a Walmart associate who has been with the company for nearly seven years, said earlier on in her time at the company, she went through a restructuring, resulting in a role change. She currently works as an in-home delivery driver in the company’s online pickup and delivery area, and she said she has applied about 90 different times to salaried positions inside the company, but has been rejected every time without explanation.
“[I have] over 15 years of managerial experience, and every single time I was told no. That was why, for me, I was like, ‘Well, maybe they need to look into it a little deeper, to see why people of color can’t get an opportunity, because 90 times is insane.’ I’m a college graduate; I’ve been with the company for six years, rolling on seven years,” she told Sourcing Journal.
Hightower, who works in Walmart’s Memphis, Tenn., market, said she sees a disparity in the number of managers of color on the daily in her own facility. According to U.S. Census Bureau data, over 64 percent of Memphis residents are Black or African American.
“In the facility that I work in now, more than half of the employees are Black, but not more than half of managers [are Black],” she said. “Even though Memphis is predominantly Black and Brown people, our manager is white…and a lot of the managers that were Black within this market have either left the company completely or [have been] terminated from the company or were forced to demote over the past year and a half.”
Walmart is the largest employer of Black people in the U.S.
In its statement advising shareholders to vote against the racial equity proposal, Walmart noted it conducts regular analyses on pay equity and has determined that “people of color are paid 1:1 (dollar for dollar) for the pay for white associates.” However, the company does not publicly disclose the findings of the pay equity audits it pointed to.
Walmart also stated that its board “continues to believe that the company has effective mechanisms to assess and continuously improve its belonging, diversity, equity and inclusion strategies and practices.”
But Hightower said, for her and her colleagues, the sense of belonging still lacks in a big way. She plans to help UFR re-file the proposal for a third time next year.
“People that look like me in positions of management and power really gives me hope and makes me want to try to achieve more. Constantly seeing more of the same and constantly being denied access makes me question, ‘Is this a place that I want to continue to work?'” she told Sourcing Journal.
Cyndi Murray, one of UFR’s founding members and a Walmart associate with more than 24 years’ worth of experience at the company, also re-filed a 2023 proposal this year. Her proposal pertained to workplace safety and violence and asked Walmart to conduct a third-party review of its policies, including on gun violence.
Last year, that proposal saw nearly 24 percent of shareholders voting affirmatively, but this year, that dropped down to 19.1 percent. Like the other proposals, Walmart’s board recommended shareholders vote against Murray’s proposal, noting that it works to “promote the health, safety and security of [its] customers” using programs like workplace violence trainings, technology for risk identification and more.
Murray told Sourcing Journal earlier this year that those programs don’t go far enough to protect Walmart associates, noting that she still believes associates could be unsafe in stores.
“There’s ways and means that Walmart could step up their game to protect their associates,” she said. “Sam Walton said, ‘If you want to know how to run your stores, ask your frontline associates,’ which is us. None of them listen to us, and we’re the ones on the frontline.”
This year, Walmart was named to National COSH’s “Dirty Dozen” list, which calls out employers that don’t go far enough to protect the safety of their employees.
Bianca Agustin, co-executive director of UFR, said that shareholders’ votes make it clear that Walmart should address both Murray and Hightower’s specific points of concern.
“Investors signaled they are listening to Walmart associates and sharing their concerns about safety and racial inequity at the company. The support we saw [Wednesday] for our proposals makes clear that it’s time for executives to listen to associates, engage in productive dialogue, and finally take action to address both the safety and racial inequity crisis taking place in Walmart stores and warehouses,” she said in a statement.
Non-profit group Oxfam America’s proposal calling on the retail giant to conduct deep-dive human rights impact assessments (HRIAs) on its supply chain and facilities faced a similar fate to the two proposals supported by UFR.
Walmart had suggested shareholders vote against the proposal because the board believed it to be redundant, given that it already uses third-party experts to conduct HRIAs, but Oxfam said the Bentonville big dog lacks transparency in its reporting on what those assessments reveal.
Earlier this year, Oxfam said Walmart uses “excessive” surveillance in its warehouses. Other human rights violations, the organization maintained, could negatively affect company revenues and investments if left undisclosed.
Oxfam submitted a similar, but not identical, proposal last year and received nearly 6 percent of shareholder votes. This year, unlike the other repeat filers, the organization’s proposal amassed a greater number of votes, with 11.5 percent of shareholders voting in favor.
Irit Tamir, director of Oxfam America’s private sector department, said that increase marks progress and should prompt Walmart to think deeper about the recommendation.
“Safeguarding human rights should be the bare minimum for any major corporation, and this vote shows that more Walmart shareholders are beginning to agree. It’s time for company leadership to start listening,” Tamir said. “The fact that Oxfam’s HRIA proposal received a strong 11.5 percent of the total shareholder vote…is a signal to Walmart that its shareholders are recognizing the need to identify, disclose and address the potential human rights risks in its operations and supply chains.”
LGIM America submitted a proposal asking Walmart to up the ante on minimum wage policies, contending that the company needed to create policies that would allow workers to meet their family’s basic needs without high degrees of stress.
Walmart’s current hourly minimum wage for in-store associates stands at $14. If an employee worked 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year at that wage, they would earn $29,120 before taxes and deductions. The 2024 federal poverty guideline for a family of four stands at $31,200 in the 48 contiguous states and Washington D.C.
Walmart has said that its overall wage average for associates comes in at $18, which, under the same aforementioned circumstances, would yield $37,440 annually.
LGIM said that the company should consider raising its hourly minimum closer to $25.02, which would leave employees earning just over $52,000 a year, if they worked 40 hours a week, for 52 weeks.
In its statement against the proposal, Walmart said it has already made strides where pay and benefits are concerned.
On Wednesday, the company announced a bonus program for in-store associates, allowing them to receive up to $1,000 annually, depending on eligibility and years of service. A Walmart spokesperson said the program “is the latest step in [its] ongoing investment in associate compensation.”
While the company did not clarify what determines initial eligibility for the bonus, the spokesperson shared how the amount for a bonus will be decided upon.
“The amount of an associate’s bonus depends on their store’s individual performance along with that associate’s years of service. The more successful a store, and the longer an associate has been with the company, the greater the payout,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson noted that the first payout is scheduled for March 2025, and nearly 700,000 associates will be eligible.
Walmart did not comment on the shareholders’ proposals.
