The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Disneyland workers demand ‘living wages’
A group of workers from the Disneyland Resort waved signs, chanted and demonstrated outside of Walt Disney Co.’s shareholders meeting in Houston on Thursday, demanding the company provide a “living wage.”
The demonstration was the latest effort by a coalition of unions at the Anaheim, Calif., theme parks that is pushing Disney executives to raise wages for the resort’s 30,000 workers during a profitable period for the Burbank media giant. Three of those unions are currently negotiating contracts.
Standing in front of the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, the demonstrators held up signs reading “#stopdisneypoverty” among other slogans.
As part of its initiative, the labor groups released an online survey last month that found that 73 percent of employees questioned don’t earn enough to pay for such expenses as rent, food and gas.
In addition, 11 percent of employees at Disneyland and California Adventure Park who responded to the survey said they have been homeless or have not had a place of their own in the last two years.
The demand for higher wages comes only a month after Disney raised ticket prices as much as 18 percent despite a highly profitable 2017, with one of its most expensive annual passes selling for $1,149 for its two Anaheim parks.
In its most recent earnings report, the Burbank media and entertainment company reported net income of $4.42 billion for the quarter that ended Dec. 30, thanks partly to a federal tax cut. The profit represented a 78 percent increase over the same period a year earlier.
Park workers also are steamed because Disney promised $1,000 bonuses to each of its 125,000 employees after the approval of the GOP federal tax overhaul. But the company is holding back the bonuses for hotel workers at theme parks in Anaheim and Orlando, pending the resolution of contract negotiations that have been going on for more than a year.