SeaWorld Orlando joins Disney, Universal with raises
SeaWorld, Aquatica and Discovery Cove employees in Orlando will be getting raises to $11 an hour next week as the wave of theme parks bumping up starting pay continues.
For SeaWorld workers, the new rate, previously $10 an hour, takes effect Monday. The company also planned to make adjustments for other employees at specific pay grade levels.
SeaWorld spokeswoman Lori Cherry confirmed the pay increases Wednesday, but the company declined to provide additional details.
“We will continue our practice of regularly evaluating our pay rates and will make future adjustments as necessary to remain competitive in the market and ensure that our team remains the best in the business,” said a message to employees by Mark Pauls, president of SeaWorld Orlando and Aquatica Orlando. “Our ambassadors are our greatest asset, and we are so proud of the work that you do.”
Walt Disney World Resort reached a contract deal with its largest union force in September to gradually raise wages to $15 an hour by October 2021. In mid-November, Universal Orlando Resort announced that pay for its workers will be jumping to $12 an hour by February.
Eric Clinton, a Disney union leader who has been vocal in pushing for higher wages, called SeaWorld’s announcement “fantastic.”
“We’ve been saying since the Disney contract, we feel like we won for everyone — that meant all the ride operators [and the food workers] at Disney and the same people who work at Universal and
now SeaWorld,” Clinton said Wednesday.
Disney is the only unionized workforce among the three major parks in Orlando.
Theme park workers affected by the pay raises at Disney, Universal and SeaWorld are estimated to be 45,000 to 50,000 people, Clinton said.
“It’s great to see the whole region will be transformed by this,” he said.
For the Central Florida parks, which are aggressively expanding and adding new attractions and hotels, there is a growing need to hire employees. SeaWorld is building Sesame Street land and a new water slide at Aquatica as well as offering an expanded events schedule, all of which is planned for 2019.
Adding new attractions and hotels not only requires construction workers to build them but also more staff to run them, said Kevin Murphy, a professor at the University of Central Florida’s Rosen College of Hospitality management.
“It’s great for the economy, don’t get me wrong,” Murphy said. “But it’s tough on businesses to get skilled labor.”
The theme parks’ growth comes at a time when the unemployment rate in Orlando is already one of the lowest in the state, said Hector Sandoval, an assistant economics professor at the University of Florida.
Central Florida’s jobless rate was at about 2.7 percent compared with the state’s already low average of 3.4 percent as of the latest numbers available in October, Sandoval said.
“That’s telling you this,” Sandoval said, “The labor market is getting tight, and we’re expecting to see these wages go up.”
The moves by Disney, Universal and SeaWorld could have a spillover effect and force hotels and smaller attractions in Central Florida to also raise wages to compete, Sandoval said.
“They need to react. They’re going to lose out against the big companies,” he said.
Sandoval predicted the theme parks will turn to technology and focus on becoming efficient as they keep growing to deal with scarcity of human workers in the future.
After the Disney contract, prices for some annual passes jumped as did reportedly the cost for food across the parks.
Clinton said he did not believe the employees’ increases were tied directly to those price hikes, arguing the prices regularly increased over the years even when workforce pay remained relatively frozen.