Disneyland Unions Have Been Talk But Little Action For Decades

Margot Roosevelt is one of the few reporters still employed (last I checked) by the Orange County Register's latest parent company, and she wrote that paper's coverage of the latest Big Labor griping about Disneyland. Someone wrote the headline as "Disneyland Resort workers struggle to pay for food, housing and medical care, union survey finds."

I'm going to assume that the words in this article were chosen and reviewed very carefully.

Last I checked, Disneyland service jobs had some pretty good benefits. However, the wages are low and the costs of living in Democrat-controlled California are high.

In an unprecedented challenge to Walt Disney Co., a coalition of 11 Disneyland unions is calling on the resort to raise its base wage to $20 an hour after a survey of 5,000 workers found many were hard-pressed to pay for food and medical expenses and 11 percent said they experienced homelessness in the past two years.

That they are having trouble paying their bills isn't necessarily proof they aren't being paid enough. I'm very curious about "experienced homelessness" given that "homeless" by some standards includes people living with a parent or sibling or friend or partner. A guy who got into a fight with his wife and is removed by police can easily be "homeless". Also, how many of these people were actually employed by Disneyland when they were homeless? If they've been employed there for six months, maybe they lost a job three years ago and ended up homeless two years ago, but then got a job at Disneyland?

According to a 125-page report “Working for the Mouse,” to be unveiled at a town hall of union members at the Anaheim Sheraton Park Hotel on Wednesday, Feb. 28, federal census and economic data show the average hourly wage for Disneyland resort workers dropped to $13.36 from $15.80 in inflation-adjusted dollars between 2000 and 2017.

To hear old timers talk, working a front line service job at Disneyland (operating rides, selling food and merchandise, cleaning, etc.) used to provide a middle-class living. There was a bitter strike in 1984 and the corporation got new corporate management and those two things changes a lot. The new contract left the existing workers with their higher wages, but a new course was set for new hires, who would earn less (relatively) and it resulted in higher turnover. A lot of those senior workers probably retired between 2000 and 2017, and that alone can explain the supposed drop in wages.

It's also important to remember that wages are not the entirety of what an employer spends on labor. There are benefits, insurance, training costs, etc.

Of 17,000 workers represented by the 11 unions, 85 percent now earn less than $15 an hour with more than half earning less than $12, below the poverty line for a family of four, according to a team of researchers at Occidental College and the Economic Roundtable, a Los Angeles nonprofit that drafted the report at the unions’ behest.

How long have the half earning less than $12 been working there?  Probably not very long. Who says they are supposed to be supporting a family of four on just the one job's wages?

“The Walt Disney Company promotes Disneyland Resort as the ‘happiest place on earth,’” the report asserts. “But for many of the approximately 30,000 people who work there, it is not the happiest place to work. Despite steep increases in the cost of housing and other necessities, Disneyland workers have suffered steady pay cuts and are struggling to make ends meet.”

I doubt individual workers have suffered a pay cut, let alone repeated pay cuts. Something else to remember is that every single person working there asked for their job. And they are free to quit.

Disney spokeswoman Suzi Brown declined to respond to the allegations of particular hardships detailed by the union members or to the report’s data on falling wages for both full-time and part-time employees.

She said, however, the average annual wage paid to full-time, hourly employees in 2017 was approximately $37,000. This includes union and non-union employees and the tips that some workers earn.

At the same time, she charged, “This inaccurate and unscientific survey was paid for by politically motivated labor unions and its results are deliberately distorted and do not reflect how the overwhelming majority of our 30,000 cast members feel about the company."

There's a lot to like about working there, especially if you like Disney and/or theme parks, and like making people happy.

Disneyland is the largest employer in Orange County with 58 percent of its workers represented by unions. More than half the resort’s workers live in Orange County, a third in Los Angeles County, 7 percent in Riverside County and 6 percent in San Bernardino County.

I'm surprised more don't live in Riverside and San Bernardino, where housing isn't as expensive.

Of the 5,000 union members who answered the 50-question survey – a representative sample by age, employment longevity and wages, according to the researchers – “Almost three-quarters (73 percent) say that they do not earn enough money for basic expenses every month,” according to the report.

That's what they say. Who wouldn't say they need more money?

The report notes that while many assume that most Disneyland jobs are entry-level positions for young workers, in fact 41 percent of the resort’s employees are 30 to 54 years old and 18 percent are over 54.

Yes, a lot of retirees, people who lost their previous jobs, teachers/school staff, freelancers, people with other part-time jobs, housespouses/newly divorced people, and immigrants work there.

The union challenge comes at a time when many workers seem torn between their affection for the parks, having in many instances grown up visiting Disneyland, and a growing disillusion with their working conditions. They have taken to social media in droves to complain about having to live in their cars, being buffeted by unpredictable working schedules, and feeling unfairly treated by the company.

Many haven't had another job before, so their concept of fair employment by an employer, even if we're not talking about thinking they should get paid more, may lack perspective. The "unpredictable working schedules" is a valid complaint. There are weeks someone might get only four hours of work, and other weeks they are strongly pressured to work a lot of overtime. Having just eight hours between shifts can be common, and even without such short turnaround, one day they can be working at 6 a.m. and the next they can be starting work late in the afternoon. Days off can jump around. They may be required to be "fully available" to be scheduled any day of the week, almost any hours, for months at a time, and still be "part time". It can be very difficult to line up and maintain other work under such conditions.

Only 28 percent of those surveyed report having the same schedule every week. More than half who are parents of young children say their schedules at the resort make it difficult to care for their families and children. Nearly two-thirds report “the scheduling of my work at the Disneyland Resort makes it difficult to find a second job.”

As I said.

Disney’s theme parks are particularly lucrative. Profit jumped 21 percent to $1.35 billion in the latest quarter, making the parks the only one of Disney’s four divisions to show earnings growth. Attendance at the Anaheim resort grew by 32 percent to 27.2 million between 2006 and 2016. Single-day ticket prices, which stood at $41 in 2000, according to the report, now range from $97 to $135 for one park.

This is supposed to show that Disney can "afford" to pay more. But it's not matter of what Disney can afford. It's about supply and demand of labor. When Disney can't find enough people to staff their facilities, they will pay more.

At the same time, Disneyland has benefited from a series of subsidies awarded by the city of Anaheim. In 2016, the city agreed to allow Disney to keep 70 percent of room taxes generated by a new luxury hotel, a deal that will return at least $200 million in revenue to the company. Disney stated the hotel would generate 1,150 full-time jobs.

When unions call that out, it's rather silly. If Disney was paying more in taxes, it would make it less likely to pay higher wages. Also, if you compare the area of Anaheim around Disneyland now to what it was like 30, 40, 50 years ago, you can see what Disneyland has meant for Anaheim.

As Disney’s average theme park wages have stagnated, executive pay has boomed. Average annual compensation for the top five Disney executives reached more than $80 million in 2016. Last year, CEO Robert Iger made $36.3 million, more than three times the amount his predecessor, Michael Eisner, earned as CEO in 2005, his last year.

The gap between median Disney workers and its CEO’s pay stood at 367 to 1, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the third widest among large U.S. public companies.

There's nothing wrong with "income inequality". Do I think Bob Iger should get paid that much? He's been great for the company, but I tend to think someone just as good would be willing to do the job for a lot less. But his compensation isn't determined by college professors, union bosses, or government employees, nor should it be.

But let's say we took $35 million from Iger and spread it to the workers at Disneyland and Walt Disney World. That's rounded down to 100,000 workers. That would be an average of $350 more per year. Nice? Sure! But many of those employees were grumbling that a $1,000 bonus wasn't enough, so getting about a third of that certainly isn't going to satisfy them. And keep in mind raising wages also has to be met other labor costs, so it wouldn't even be an extra $350 in pay.

Jobs exist because someone can't or doesn't want to do the work themselves, and so they're willing to pay someone else to do it for them, and they have the means to pay them. It's not because someone likes you and wants to give you money and benefits. If the compensation and conditions of the job aren't worth it to you, seek another job, which can be through starting your own business.

It is interesting to see news media focusing on Disney. What are other employers who offer similar positions paying?

I think it would be great if Disneyland workers got paid more, especially the ones who are there for more than just a season. But this is a matter of supply and demand and the things to which people actually agree by the words, signatures, and actions, not what their unions say in their theatrical posturing.

If I understand things correctly, the unions get sizable initiation fees from workers in addition to dues (and union membership comes with the job). To me, that sounds like an incentive to keep turnover high. With high turnover, you're less likely to have workers who would be willing to strike. Most of them don't expect to be there long-term. But the union gets its money either way, doesn't it? And what do they do with it? They support politicians and legislation and policies that do things like encourage more illegal aliens to come to California. And what happens then? Wages are kept down, because illegal aliens are willing to work for less.

So the workers either don't think they'll be around long enough, and/or don't have the savings needed to strike, which is probably why there hasn't been a strike since 1984, if I recall correctly. The unions have been singing the same tune ever since 1984, at least. And yet things don't change that much. Hmmm.

Disneyland union workers in those front-line service jobs have a few basic options:

1) They can stay put and accept things are they are, and keep their living expenses as low as possible.

2) They can seek to take higher-paying "trade" jobs at Disneyland (plumbers, electricians, etc.) or promotions into management to salaried, non-union "career" positions, accepting that these positions have much less job security.

3) Marry rich.

4) Get other jobs.

These are all options that have actually been done by many Disneyland workers.

Unfortunately, with the way scheduling and overtime works, there are lot of people who figure they'll get a job at Disneyland while in college, and then when they graduate they'll move on to a career in what they studied. Then they find themselves scrambling for more hours of work, maybe partying too much, and pregnant or knocking someone up (especially outside of marriage). Their studies suffer, and then finishing college seems to be too difficult or expensive.

If you're a Disneyland worker, don't fall into that trap. And don't think the wages are going to rise all that much. The unions have been talking big for over 30 years and yet things are the way they are still. I recommend you seriously consider options 2, 3, and 4.