Walt disney’s great niece escalates attack on company’s pay practices

HEIRESS Abigail Disney made headlines this week after she criticised the company founded by her greatuncle.

She stepped up her attack on Tuesday, writing in an opinion column about what she called the “naked indecency” of the company’s pay practices.

Disney’s column, which carried the headline “It’s time to call out my family’s company – and anyone else rich off their workers’ backs”, was published by the Washington Post.

She excoriated The Walt Disney Company for awarding its chief executive, Robert Iger, a $65 million pay package.

Abigail cited a union-sponsored study showing that the package was 1 400 times that of the median Disney worker and called for the company to “reward all your workers fairly”.

The company said: “Disney has made historic investments to expand the earning potential and upward mobility of our workers, implementing a starting hourly wage of $15 at Disneyland that’s double the minimum wage.”

It said it committed up to $150m for an education initiative that gave hourly employees the opportunity to obtain a college or vocational degree at no cost.

The company said 90% of Iger’s compensation was based on financial performance and that, under Iger’s watch, Disney’s stock price had risen from $24 a share to $133 “which directly benefits the thousands of employees who hold our stock”.

Abigail is a granddaughter of Roy O Disney, who founded the company in 1923 with his brother, Walt Disney. The family have not been involved in managing the company since Roy E Disney, Abigail’s father, stepped down from the board in 2003.

In her article and Twitter posts, Abigail said she was not speaking on behalf of the broader Disney family.

Abigail is a philanthropist and the director of a 2014 documentary,

that follows an antiabortion activist and a supporter of abortion rights. She has also produced films like about a coalition of Christian and Muslim women in Liberia. She is the founder of Level Forward, a start-up that backs media projects driven by women and people of colour. |

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