U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders took aim at the mouse house today on twitter today calling out, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The Walt Disney Company, Bob Iger over his $400 million pay.
The longtime senator from Vermont asks in a tweet why Iger is paid hundreds of millions of dollars, while workers at Disney theme parks struggle to make ends meet.
“Does Disney CEO Bob Iger have a good explanation for why he is being compensated more than $400 million while workers at Disneyland are homeless and relying on food stamps to feed their families?” tweeted Sanders. Take a look below.
Sanders attacked Iger’s hefty pay package, which some estimates say could earn the executive as much as $423 million over the next four years if he hits all of his performance goals.
Sanders has targeted Disney before. While on the presidential campaign trail he used the media conglomerate as Exhibit A in what he calls a “rigged economy” at an Anaheim campaign event. “Anybody make a living wage at Disney?” Sanders asked the crowd.
Sanders was referencing a survey conducted by the Economic Roundtable — which found that 73% of Disney employees who were questioned said they don’t earn enough to pay for such basic expenses as rent, food and gas. It also found that 11% of resort employees have been homeless or have not had a place of their own in the last two years.
Disney dismissed the study calling it inaccurate and unscientific and paid for by labor groups seeking a pay raise. Disney officials have said that the average annual pay for hourly workers at the resort is $37,000, which calculates to about $17.80 an hour.
In a Facebook post Iger responded to Sanders: “To Bernie Sanders: We created 11,000 new jobs at Disneyland in the past decade and our company has created 18,000 in the U.S. in the last five years. How many jobs have you created? What have you contributed to the U.S. economy?”
Sanders has been rallying with Disneyland workers in Anaheim, California, as they pushed for a minimum $15 per hour wage.
“The struggle that you are waging here in Anaheim is not just for you,” Sanders told Disneyland workers last month at a rally. “It is a struggle for millions of workers all across this country who are sick and tired of working longer hours for lower wages.”
Iger has thrown around the idea of running for president and he’s shown he willing to hold his ground and fire back, so we’ll have to see if this fizzles out or turns into a full out twitter war.
