Low-Wage Villain of the Week: Pharrell

We’re sure that Pharrell is a really nice guy and that he’s only showing up for a Walmart shareholders’ performance because he doesn’t know that the nation’s largest retailer, owned by the country’s richest family, pays many of its workers such atrocious wages and benefits that they receive public assistance. He probably doesn’t know that a Walmart contractor just settled to pay $21 million for wage theft or the federal government is prosecuting Walmart for illegally firing workers who went on strike to protest retaliation. Certainly, he can’t be aware that the company’s executives are taking home hundreds of millions in compensation while the average worker makes less than $25,000 a year.

There’s no way Pharrell would be “happy” to perform for such a company if he knew the full scope of the problem, but since he hasn’t learned that yet and is helping celebrate a company that makes so many working families unhappy, he’s the Low-Wage Villain of the Week.

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This has been reposted from the AFL-CIO.