As Walmart workers across the country coordinate a Black Friday walkout in an effort to build awareness about the national retailer’s low wages and poor working conditions, the company is on a media offensive to downplay their associates’ concerns and reassure shoppers.

During an appearance on CNN Tuesday morning, Vice President of Communications David Tovar sought to brush aside the fact that Walmart is paying its associates salaries that are just slightly above the poverty line, even as the company reported a 9 percent increase in third-quarter net income, earning $3.63 billion. He insisted that the company has “got great associates” who are “going to do a great job for us this holiday season.”

But when host Carol Costello pressed Tovar on the growing wealth gap in America and Walmart’s role in insuring a robust middle class, he dodged the question, but not before suggesting that the store offers associates a discount to buy Walmart products (and invest their pay checks back into the company):

COSTELLO: The wage gap in this country continues to grow ever wider. you know, we hear from economists all the time, we need a strong middle class to make our overall economy stronger. Is it Walmart’s responsibility to make sure that its employees can support a strong middle-class lifestyle?

TOVAR: We’re working hard every day to provide more opportunities for associates. [...]

COSTELLO: But if a lot of them are making $15,000 a year, you can’t live a strong middle-class lifestyle on that. You just can’t. [...]

TOVAR: Our average rate is about $12.40 an hour far a full time associate. We also offer comprehensive benefit packages as low as $17 a pay period, which is very affordable and we also pay quaterly bonuses, which is something that not a lot of retailers do…. And we know that they appreciate that, they also get a 10 percent discount card. So you have to factor in all of those things when you’re looking for how we’re helping associates.

Watch it:

Walmart CEO Michael Duke has a total compensation of $18.1 million, and is the second highest paid executive in the Fortune 500. According to CNN Money, it would take more than 700 employees’ salaries to match his total compensation package.

Making Change at Walmart, the group leading Black Friday’s protest, is asking for a minimum wage of $13 an hour, more full time positions and affordable health care. Currently, the typical employee is paid $22,100 a year, slightly below the federal poverty line for a family of four (which is at $23,050 in 2012). Walmart earned $15 billion last year.

Walmart workers across the country have been striking during the last week, in a buildup to a coordinated walkout on Black Friday — the day after Thanksgiving, which is one of the biggest retail days of the year. According to the group Making Change at Walmart, “a thousand store protests are planned in Chicago, Dallas, Miami, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Milwaukee, Los Angeles, Minnesota, and Washington, D.C.” Here’s what you need to know about the situation:

– WHY WORKERS ARE STRIKING: Workers — organized by non-union OUR Walmart — are protesting that Walmart continues to pay low wages and cut benefits, even while it is making billions of dollars in profits. The strikes that have occurred are the first in the 50 year history of the company. Workers have demanded “more-predictable schedules, less-expensive health-care plans and minimum hourly pay of $13 with the option of working full-time.” The company is increasing employee contributions towards its health plan in 2013. Walmart made $15 billion last year, and paid its CEO $18.1 million.

– WALMART’S RESPONSE: The company has claimed that it is “not aware of any major disruptions that are going to happen Black Friday.” However, it has filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board alleging that the protests are being orchestrated by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which Walmart claims is a labor law violation.

– WHY NOW?: Black Friday is not only one of the biggest shopping days of the year, but Walmart and other large retailers have steadily increased their Black Friday hours to extend into Thanksgiving Day. This year, Walmart’s “Black Friday” starts at 8 p.m. Thursday, so workers will miss Thanksgiving evening with their families. Employees claim “they weren’t given a choice as to whether they would work on Thanksgiving and were told to do so with little warning.”

Workers and other concerned citizens have started several petitions aimed at getting Walmart and other big retailers to stop opening so early on Thanksgiving.

Last year, several giant retailers opened on Black Friday even earlier than usual, with several stores opening at midnight and cutting into workers’ Thanksgiving celebrations. That hasn’t stopped this year.

So far, Walmart, Sears, and Toys “R” Us aren’t even waiting for the day after Thanksgiving and will open at 8 p.m. Thursday. Target will open its doors at 9 p.m., and Macy’s and Best Buy will start their Black Friday deals at midnight.

But retail employees and their families are protesting the earlier hours and steady invasion on their time with their families. About 40 petitions have popped up on Change.org targeting the earlier openings at Walmart, Best Buy, Sears, Target, and Toys “R” Us, including one from a Target employee’s sister:

Jennifer Ann, 26, started the petition so that her younger brother, a part-time Target employee, can spend Thanksgiving with the family. She asked that her last name not be published to protect her brother’s employment with the retailer.

“Last year he had to leave early, and this year he won’t be able to make it at all,” she said. Her brother, who has worked at Target for a handful of years, is a full-time student. Jennifer Ann said her brother enjoys his job and has no plans to leave Target. [...]

“I just hope next year this doesn’t occur. I hope retailers take a look at this,” Jennifer Ann said. “Every year this gets worst. People want to spend Thanksgiving with their families. Next year, I hope they revert to the way things were when Black Friday was on Friday.“

A spokesman for Sears said customers are asking for “more flexible Black Friday shopping hours,” leading to its earlier hours, and Target’s spokeswoman said the earlier opening was “carefully evaluated with our guests, team and the business in mind.” But Renee, a Target employee, started a petition asking the store to “save Thanksgiving” because the holiday is one of only three days retail employees get off each year, “a day most all of us spend with family we only get to see on that day,” she wrote. More than 180,000 people have signed her petition on Change.org.

Last year, Anthony Hardwick, another Target employee, started a petition challenging the long hours employees had to work when the store opened at midnight. Tens of thousands of people signed his petition, but the stores are still opening even earlier this year. Hardwick, who no longer works at Target, called the creeping of Black Friday into Thanksgiving “ridiculous.” He said, “We’re getting rid of Thanksgiving dinner, and for what? For a $300 flat-screen TV?”

Walmart is under fire after an investigation by Mercy for Animals revealed inhumane practices at a plant operated by one of its pork suppliers, Christensen Farms. The non-profit sent an investigator to a Christensen plant in Minnesota who came away with video evidence documenting several practices, including gestation crates and tail-docking, that are widely condemned by animal advocates and banned in a number of states. Watch it (warning for intensely graphic content):

Christensen, one of the largest pork producers in the country, claimed its practices are “within standard animal welfare practices.” Both a veterinarian and an animal behavior expert who reviewed the footage disagreed in strong terms. One said, “what I saw in this video is all too familiar to me from other factory farm footage I have seen: it is an unremitting hell on earth.” Gestation crates — the impossibly small cages that cause much of the pain documented in the video — are being phased out in the EU after a comprehensive expert review of the harm they do to animals.

Mercy for Animals has had success working with corporations to stop doing business cruel suppliers in the past. A campaign against egg producer Sparboe Farms caused both McDonald’s and Target to drop the company. Costco recently decided to end its relationship with farms that employ gestation crates, though the company claims the decision was unrelated to Mercy for Animals’ investigation. Many other major restaurant and grocery corporations have voluntarily asked suppliers to stop using gestation crates.

Mercy for Animals is circulating a petition asking Walmart to end its relationship with Christensen.

Last year, Sylvia Allegretto, a labor economist at the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics, found that as of 2007, the Walton family — heirs to the Walmart fortune — had a net worth equal to that of the bottom 30 percent of Americans. And due to the effects of the Great Recession that ratio has gotten substantially worse.

New Federal Reserve data analyzed by both Allegretto and Josn Bivens at the Economic Policy Institute shows that the Waltons now hold as much wealth as the bottom 40 percent of Americans combined:

Concretely, between 2007 and 2010, while median family wealth fell by 38.8 percent, the wealth of the Walton family members rose from $73.3 billion to $89.5 billion…In 2007, it was reported that the Walton family wealth was as large as the bottom 35 million families in the wealth distribution combined, or 30.5 percent of all American families.

And in 2010, as the Walton’s wealth has risen and most other Americans’ wealth declined, it is now the case that the Walton family wealth is as large as the bottom 48.8 million families in the wealth distribution (constituting 41.5 percent of all American families) combined.

Allegretto charted the change in wealth over the 2007-2010 period:

At the same time that the Waltons have amassed an ever larger fortune, Congress decided to cut the estate tax, a policy for which the Waltons have been pushing for years. And now that the estate tax cut is in place, conservatives are doing everything they can to ensure it doesn’t go away, allowing the Waltons to amass even larger amounts of wealth.

In this Sunday’s New York Times, the paper revealed an explosive story of high-level corruption at Walmart, aided by a whistleblower’s account of how the retail giant bribed its way to market dominance in Mexico. But unsurprisingly, the Sunday talk shows ignored the scandal entirely.

One former executive told the Times about how Walmart employees brought envelopes of cash to government officials in Mexico in order to boost the company’s expansion:

The Times examination included more than 15 hours of interviews with the former executive, Sergio Cicero Zapata, who resigned from Wal-Mart de Mexico in 2004 after nearly a decade in the company’s real estate department.

In the interviews, Mr. Cicero recounted how he had helped organize years of payoffs. He described personally dispatching two trusted outside lawyers to deliver envelopes of cash to government officials. They targeted mayors and city council members, obscure urban planners, low-level bureaucrats who issued permits — anyone with the power to thwart Wal-Mart’s growth. The bribes, he said, bought zoning approvals, reductions in environmental impact fees and the allegiance of neighborhood leaders.

Maritza Munich, former general counsel of Wamart International, also resigned in 2006, after pushing Walmart executives to complete an investigation into the accounts of bribery. Walmart, however, quashed the investigation. The acts of bribery could be violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which makes it a crime for American corporations to bribe foreign officials. The Department of Justice is responsible for investigating potential violations of the act.

Walmart responded to the story with a lengthy statement, saying “the investigation is ongoing and we don’t have a full explanation of what happened. It would be inappropriate for us to comment further on the specific allegations until we have finished the investigation.” Walmart International has previously faced criticism for its treatment of workers and mislabeling of products.

Income inequality in the U.S. is currently the highest its been since the 1920s, with the 400 richest Americans (who are all billionaires) having as much wealth as the bottom 50 percent of Americans combined. And as it turns out, just one wealthy family has managed to amass a fortune equal to that of the combined net worth of the bottom 30 percent of Americans — the Waltons, heirs to the Walmart fortune, as Sylvia Allegretto, a labor economist at the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics, found:

The triennial Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) is one of the best sources for data on wealth in the U.S. And, of course the Forbes 400 estimates the worth of the wealthiest amongst us—all 400 wouldn’t be captured in the SCF. If we look at both the SCF and the Forbes 400 we can glean some interesting insights.

In 2007 (the most recent SCF) the cumulative wealth of the Forbes 400 was $1.54 trillion or roughly the same amount of wealth held by the entire bottom fifty percent of American families. This is a stunning statistic to be sure.

Upon closer inspection, the Forbes list reveals that six Waltons—all children (one daughter-in-law) of Sam or James “Bud” Walton the founders of Wal-Mart—were on the list. The combined worth of the Walton six was $69.7 billion in 2007—which equated to the total wealth of the entire bottom thirty percent!

Not only have the Waltons gathered a fortune equal to that of the bottom third of the country, but they spend it lobbying to cut their own taxes. For years, the Waltons have been supporting efforts to cut the estate tax, the tax levied on inheritance. Conservatives intent on cutting this tax — which they’ve brilliantly dubbed the “death tax” — led to President Obama agreeing to a “compromise” last year that lowered the rate and increased the tax-free exemption, giving a senseless tax break to extremely wealthy families.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, “for the 1 percent of the population with the highest income, average real after-tax household income grew by 275 percent between 1979 and 2007,” while it grew by just 18 percent for the bottom 20 percent of the income scale. In a given year, the richest ten percent of the country takes home about one quarter of total income. But Congress still saw fit last year to give a tax break to the very richest families, who have collected fortunes that dwarf anything the rest of the country will ever see. (HT: Huffington Post)