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FAYETTEVILLE, Ark.--(Business Wire)--Sending a message to the Walmart heirs who control the company, a growing number of institutional investors, independent shareholders, analysts and advisors are raising concerns – and proposing changes – at Walmart’s annual shareholders meeting Friday.

There was a lot of pomp and circumstance at Walmart's (WMT) shareholder meeting Friday.

In the "pomp" department, over 20,000  of Walmart employees were treated to a star-studded spectacle featuring Pharrell, Robin Thicke, Florida Georgia Line, Sarah McLachlan and Harry Connick Jr., among others. 

As the nation’s trillion-dollar student debt continues to rise, a new analysis of public higher education’s funding finds dwindling state support is the key factor driving rising tuition costs and deepening student debt.

If you want to understand how privatization of public services typically works, Grand Rapids, Michigan is as good a place as any to start.

Walmart workers speaking at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in Bentonville, Arkansas, on Friday said the megastore’s staffing problems and poor pay were hurting the company’s image and contributing to lagging sales.

Their statement comes after a week of rallies across the country by labor activists, union representatives and workers in cities such as Chicago; Dayton, Ohio; and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The demonstrators have taken aim at the plight of the company’s low-wage employees and the burden they say Walmart’s staffing policies place on working mothers.

All across the country, public services are increasingly outsourced to private contractors in the name of efficiency and cost savings. But a new report from the non-profit research group In the Public Interest (ITPI) shows that outsourcing public services hurts middle and working class communities as well as workers.

You’ve probably heard by now that a stunning 95 percent of the gains the United States economy has made in the years since the Great Recession have gone to the top 1 percent.

Under the banner of "Walmart moms," mothers who work at Walmart launched strikes in 20 cities across the United States on Wednesday to protest what they say are poverty wages and routine policies of retaliation against workers who organize. From Chicago to Pittsburgh to Miami, the mass actions were part of rolling strikes launched last Friday by Our Walmart members.