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The shareholder resolutions, according to an unofficial tally presented later in the meeting, were all voted down - not a big surprise, when the Walton family alone holds about fifty percent of the company stock, thanks to stock buybacks. (A report last year from nonpartisan think tank Demos found that if the company had spent the money it did on share buybacks on workers' wages instead, it could have given each of its 825,000, low-wage employees a raise of $5.13 an hour.) No number of shareholders like Martha Sellers, a 12-year Walmart employee, can overturn the Walton vote. Sellers showed me her stock certificate, what she's garnered over those years, putting the maximum amount allowed from each paycheck into Walmart stock: $32,000. "That's my retirement," she said. "Do you think I'm going to be able to retire?" She's 57.
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