The Organization United for Respect at WalMart, a group of the company's employees, have planned a demonstration at the department chain's annual shareholder meeting in Bentonville, Arkansas on Friday where they will demand better pay and benefits from management.

According to Al Jazeera America, labor activists and union representatives along with workers have led protests throughout the week in Chicago; Dayton, Ohio; and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Protestors also held a rally in front of a Walton family member's Phoenix home.

The workers allege that the Walton family, who owns WalMart, have been benefiting from the store's tax breaks and subsidies while also profiting at the expense of their employees who receive food stamps.

Moira Bulloch, a spokeswoman of the Union for Food and Commercial Workers and backer of OUR WalMart, said that WalMart could easily reduce the nation's poor by 1.5 million people by providing a wage hike.

"If WalMart were to raise their wages to pay $25,000 a year for full-time work, we could lift as many as 1.5 millino people out of poverty," Bulloch claimed.

According to the National Women's Law Center, WalMart leads the nation hiring female workers. The center also said that women account for roughly two-thirds of the low-income workers in the U.S.

A report published Tuesday by Demos, a liberal think tank, found that there is a $40.8 billion pay gap in gender as a result of the lopsidedness in the industry's lowest-pad positions.

However, WalMart insisted that the UFCW is using the protests as a "PR stunt" and said the union makes "preposterous claims about participation" in the rallies.

A WalMart spokesman said that last year's demonstrations and protests were much bigger than it is this year, Al Jazeera reported.

"About 100 of our 1.3 million associates around the country participated in this week's demonstrations," the spokesman said.

He also claimed that employees do have access to employee benefits such as health insurance and 401k.

"Typically the union will have maybe one associate at a demonstration and then fill out the rest of the group with union members from our unionized retail competitors or paid protestors," he said. "Our associates have access to health benefits for as little as $36 a month, a 401(k) program with 6 percent company match, bonuses based on the performance of their stores and education and training opportunities."