Disney workers approve new contract raising minimum wage

ORLANDO, FLA. » Thousands of Walt Disney World workers on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a new contract that increases the starting minimum wage to $15 an hour over the next three years while enabling Disney to use more part-time workers and require new workers to stay in their positions longer before transferring.

Scores of union workers chanted “Union! Union!” and “Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, hey, hey, we got a raise!” as they waited for the votes to be counted at a hotel in the heart of Orlando’s tourism district.

“We got a fair deal,” Matt Hollis, who leads a coalition of six unions, told the workers after the vote was counted.

Union officials said the new contract would have an impact outside of Walt Disney World as other nonunionized businesses in central Florida’s low-wage service economy compete for tourism workers in a tight job market. The contract covers more than half of the 70,000 workers at Disney World, the largest single-site employer in the United States. Those workers include costumed characters, bus drivers, launderers, retail workers, monorail drivers, custodians, housekeepers, servers, cooks, florists, makeup artists and lifeguards.

“The way I feel is we won this for our members at Disney but we also won this for the ride operator at Universal Studios who doesn’t have a union,” said Eric Clinton, president of Unite Here Local 362, one of the six unions that represents 38,000 workers covered by the contract. “This affects Hyatt, Hilton. They are going to have to raise wages to compete with others. This is 38,000 people. This isn’t a small amount.”

Besides raising the starting minimum wage almost 50 percent to $15 an hour in three years, the new four-year contract would raise wages for existing workers by at least $4.75 an hour by October 2021. Each Florida worker also will receive a $1,000 bonus that Disney had paid to other employees after last year’s tax cut by Congress. Those bonuses were withheld during the contract negotiations.

The new contract expands anti-discrimination protections to include gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, military or veteran status and genetic information.