Wal-Mart will host 3,000 employees from all over the world to celebrate its annual shareholder meeting in Arkansas this week, but another group of Wal-Mart employees plans to upstage the company’s pep rally by going on strike in 20 cities nationwide.

Hundreds of “Wal-Mart moms” and other workers plan to strike to protest what they allege is illegal retaliation against employees who’ve publicly spoken about wage and benefits inequality, according to Jamie Way, a spokesperson for the United Food & Commercial Workers International Union. The strike is designed to coincide with the shareholder meeting on Friday, she says. Most Wal-Mart moms are paid less than $25,000 a year, leading many to rely on government-subsidized programs, she adds.

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The big-box retailer responded on Wednesday, insisting that the protesters didn’t represent Wal-Mart’s employees.

“You might see people shouting bad things about our company,” Gisel Ruiz, chief operating officer for Wal-Mart U.S., told a 2,200-strong crowd of Wal-Mart employees at the Bud Walton Arena in the University of Arkansas. “They are not associated with Wal-Mart. They are paid to disrupt this week’s activity.” She added, “This group doesn’t represent Wal-Mart. You represent Wal-Mart. They are paid by UFCW.”

In fact, both sides are giving financial help to employees to show up at their events. Wal-Mart is paying the food, lodging and transportation costs for 3,000 employees to attend this week’s meeting, although they will be staying in campus dormitories rather than hotels, according to spokesman Kory Lundberg. Meanwhile, the striking workers – who are not unionized – receive financial aid for travel and hotels, partially funded by donations from community supporters and Wal-Mart workers, Way says.

Some Wal-Mart WMT, -1.02% workers do appear to be struggling to make ends meet. Last November, the company’s employees organized a holiday food drive at a Canton, Ohio store, which reignited the debate about low pay for many of Wal-Mart’s 1.3 million workers in the U.S. Lundberg called it “associates getting together to help an associate who faced an extreme hardship or critical need” – and not a food drive.

For example, “how much money do you need if your child dies?” he adds. “If you make a million dollars, you still need people to lean on, to count on.”

Full-time workers earn on average $12.81 per hour, and Wal-Mart’s 4,200 store managers earn an average of $170,000, “similar to what a doctor or attorney make,” Lundberg says. But Haeyoung Yoon, deputy program director at the National Employment Law Project, a non-profit research and advocacy group for low-wage workers, calls that wage gap “astonishing”, and says most Wal-Mart employees are underpaid. “They should be paying workers higher wages for the hours they work, rather than organizing a food drive,” she says.

Barbara Gertz, 46, who works as an overnight stocker at Wal-Mart in Aurora, Co., has been on strike since May 31, and is protesting in Bentonville, Ark.

“I earn $22,000 a year and that’s after five and a half years of employment,” she says. “I would like Wal-Mart to show us respect. The way they treat us is horrible. We’re not trying to shut Wal-Mart down. We have a vision. Wal-Mart is the largest retailer in the world. There’s no reason why we couldn’t be the best retailer in the world.”

While in Bentonville, Gertz is staying at a Holiday Inn.