Bernie Sanders attends Walmart shareholders 'meeting to present workers' plan: NPR

Bernie Sanders may not have the usual adoring crowd during his visit to the Wednesday campaign. He will be speaking to Walmart shareholders at their annual meeting.

The Vermont Senator and Democratic presidential candidate 2020 will present a proposal to give workers representation on the company's board of directors, echoing the policy he apparently was working on. (Elizabeth Warren has published a similar policy.)

On Tuesday afternoon, Sanders issued a statement criticizing Walmart for problems other than employee representation on the board.

"It is time for Walmart to pay a decent wage to all its employees, give them a place at the table, stop them from joining a union and allow part-time employees to work full-time," did he declare.

This is not just Sanders; This is an example of a tactic that has gained popularity in the 2020 presidential race by calling candidates to specific companies in their campaigns and policies.

Sanders presents the resolution on behalf of Cat Davis, worker and shareholder at Walmart, and leader of the United for Respect group, which aims to protect workers' rights in large corporations.

The proposal would require the board to add hourly associates to its lists of potential new members. Sanders will have three minutes to present the resolution, which will be put to the vote on Wednesday. The resolution should not pass.

Candidates vs companies

By 2018, Sanders had already targeted Walmart with the Stop WALMART Act – "WALMART", which means "the well-being of any major monopoly generating significant tax revenues". This bill would have prevented large employers from undertaking stock repurchases unless they take special measures to stimulate workers, for example by paying them at least $ 15 at the hour. .

He introduced another bill with a sharp acronym, the Stop BEZOS Act (aka "Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies") – a title for Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. This bill would tax big employers for social protection programs, such as food stamps, used by their workers.

Technology companies have also been reviewed by candidates, as they are at Capitol Hill. Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Issued a plan in March to dissolve large technology companies, with the goal of enabling small businesses to thrive. In her unveiling, she called some companies by name.

"My administration is going to make major structural changes in the technology sector to promote more competition, including the demolition of Amazon, Facebook and Google," Warren wrote in an article in the newspaper Media Medium. . Since then, Sanders and Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard have expressed support for his plan.

In addition, strikes at the Stop and Shop grocery chain attracted the support of candidates including Warren, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, and former Vice President Joe Biden. . Similarly, strikes in McDonald's restaurants have attracted the support of many candidates.

Populism on the rise on the display

Democratic candidates targeted businesses during the 2016 campaign – Bernie Sanders targeted McDonald's goal for his salary. Hillary Clinton and himself joined the striking workers at Verizon in 2016.

"We have always struggled to know how to make politics tangible?" Said Amanda Renteria, political director of the 2016 Clinton campaign. "And it's a very easy way to do it." People know what Walmart does is, people have a conception about it. "

But Clinton rarely referred to specific companies negatively during the 2016 campaign.

"It really was not his style," Renteria said.

This is a tactic that relatively few important candidates have put at the center of their campaigns in recent years. But the willingness to aggressively call big business has been slow to come forward.

"I think the political moment in which we live is really an extension of the activism of the workers who started in 2012, 2013" said Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, a defense group from Sanders' 2016 presidential race.

He talks about walkouts among fast food workers and other low-wage workers who took place during those years (at the time he was a member of the Good Jobs Nation Workers' Defense Group). ).

These walkouts themselves have a variety of even older potential causes, he added – long-standing inequities; a long and slow recovery after the Great Recession; and the subsequent occupancy movement, for example.

But regardless of the path followed, the climax is a political atmosphere where anger is a dominant emotion – and something modeled by President Trump, as well as liberal personalities.

"We have been in a populist moment for six or seven years," said Geevarghese. "I think Occupy, the wave of the strike, are all symbols of that, but I also think that Donald Trump is a symbol of the populist wave, at least when it comes to his willingness to do so. To take on companies like GM, companies like Carrier. "

For her part, Renteria recognizes that Sanders and Warren have popularized anti-business rhetoric as a campaign strategy. But she also warns that it might not work for everyone.

"For someone like Elizabeth Warren, she's been in this space since the beginning of her career, so she's just validating her brand," said Renteria.

This means that calling Amazon or Walmart seems genuine for candidates like Sanders, Warren and Trump. This might not be the case for a candidate like Hillary Clinton, and could be very complicated for other Democrats who would run in 2020.

"I think if other candidates were looking at it and saying," Wow, I can do it too. It makes more concrete the policy I'm working on, which could turn against us, "Renteria said.

In addition, it is quite possible that this type of rhetoric could create a powerful trading enemy for a candidate at a time when unlimited money is pouring into the coffers of superPACs.

But then, an event such as the Walmart shareholders' meeting allows a candidate to have a media moment that a mere policy publication might not create. And this is especially important in a field of about two dozen candidates.

Walmart is one of the financial sponsors of NPR.