Disney News

Tag: wages

  • Unions at Disneyland Are Putting ‘Living Wage Ordinance’ On Anaheim Ballot

    Unions at Disneyland Are Putting ‘Living Wage Ordinance’ On Anaheim Ballot

    Unions representing Disneyland have band together in an effort to gather enough signatures to put a ballot measure before Anaheim voters that would require Disneyland to pay the resort workers a “living wage.”

    The coalition is made up of 11 labor unions and they have been pushing for higher wages at Disneyland Resort and nearby hotels. They says they plan to present a petition with about 20,000 signatures to the Anaheim city clerk’s office this morning.

    The measure would end up on the November ballot if enough signatures are verified and would ask voters to require Disney and other large Anaheim employers that accept city subsidies to pay workers a minimum of $15 an hour starting Jan. 1, 2019. Salaries would then rise $1 an hour every Jan. 1 through 2022. Once the wages reach $18 an hour, annual raises would then be based on the cost of living.

    The petition drive was launched by a coalition of employee unions shortly after a survey — that 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 — was released in February. 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.

    The survey was conducted by the Economic Roundtable, a nonprofit research organization in Los Angeles, and the Urban & Environmental Policy Institute at Occidental College.

    To qualify for the November ballot, the unions needed to collect the signatures of 10%, or 13,150, of the voters in Anaheim. The coalition of unions says it deployed at least 50 volunteers each day since April 12 to collect the 20,000 signatures.

    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.

  • Homeless Disney Worker Who Died Living in Her Car Becomes Center Of Wages Debate

    Homeless Disney Worker Who Died Living in Her Car Becomes Center Of Wages Debate

    The homeless Disney worker who died alone, living in her car, has recently been put in the center of Disneyland’s wages debate.

    Yeweinishet “Weini” Mesfin kept her struggles mostly to herself and it took 20 days of frantic searching by friends and family before her body was found around noon on Dec. 19, 2016. She was found dressed in exercise clothes and clutching her keys, in the driver’s seat of her dark green 1999 sedan parked at the gym where she showered.

    Mesfin lived out of her Honda Civic for seven years but all she wanted was privacy and hid her struggles from almost everyone, according to a report by The Orange County Register. Mesfin decided not to tell family and coworkers that she was homeless, outside of one or two people.

    Now Mesfin’s private struggle is the subject of public debate more than a year after her death. A recent union-commissioned survey of 5,000 Disney employees showed that the vast majority of respondents stated they were being paid less than $15 an hour, and about 3/4 of those surveyed said they run out of money by the end of month, according to the study. Headlines about the about the findings quickly spread and soon she was the subject of social media posts and stories claiming she died because of her paycheck.

    Disney officials, however, dispute the surveys findings as “deliberately distorted,” calling them an “inaccurate and unscientific survey … paid for by politically motivated labor unions,” according to a statement from Suzi Brown, the vice president of communications for Disneyland Resort.

    However on the issue of Mesfin’s disappearance, Brown said, Disney security also requested a welfare check by Anaheim police. They also made calls to multiple police departments and maintained Mesfin’s status as a cast member until she was found dead.

    Employment records show Mesfin began working part-time at the Anaheim theme park in 2007, according to Brown. Mesfin became a full-time cast member in 2009.

    Co-worker said, Mesfin was third-shift custodial at Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, with typical hours starting at 11 or 11:30 p.m. and ending around 8 a.m. Her pay was most likely was around $13 or $14 an hour at the time of her death, according to the report.

    The 61 year-old passed alone almost a week after her birthday.