Disney: Not the Happiest Place on Earth
Put forth on August 13, 2008 by XicanoPwr
Posted in activism
Hat tip to blogamiga Adriana of Latino Politics Blog for the heads up on this issue. Disney Corporation’s winter quarter profits hit a record high of $1.18 billion. However, this is not enough, Disney figures the can cut cost by denying health benefits to employees who work fewer than 30 hours or 5 days per week. Disney also proposes to force new hires into the more expensive Disney Signature Plan instead of the more affordable Union Health Plan, which now will force 2,300 hotel employees to pay between $1102 to $2641 per year to keep union health benefits.
So who exactly will be affected, the housekeepers, bellmen, bartenders, dishwashers, and cooks who overwhelming are Latina/o and are employed at the Disneyland, Grand Californian, and Paradise Pier hotels. In response, Unite Here! Local 681, are planning to picket the Paradise Pier Hotel and march in front of Disneyland tomorrow evening, August 14.
Since I know I have a large readership in California, I know this is last minute, but if you have time, please show your support for these hard working men and women. People like Gloria Pena, who has been a housekeeper with Disneyland Hotel for 26 Years.
“Después de trabajar como Recamarera toda mi vida, he sido diagnosticada con artritis y osteoporosis. Si yo continuo trabajando en Disney es por mis beneficios médicos de la unión. Sin embargo, con las propuesta de Disney ya no podre pagar por el seguro de salud ¿Por que nos esta haciendo Disney esto? ¡No podemos permitir que esto nos suceda!
“After working as a Housekeeper all my life, I have been diagnosed with Arthritis and Osteoporosis. I continue to work at Disney because of my Union health insurance benefits. With Disney’s proposal, I won’t be able to afford health insurance. Why is Disney doing this to us? We can’t let this happen!
Or Jean Bustamante who has been a server for Yamabuki Restaurant at Paradise Pier Hotel for 15 years.
“Soy madre soltera de dos niños. Mi hijo de 7 añitos tiene parálisis cerebral así como otros problemas de salud. Con la propuesta de la Compañía de Casual Regular perdería el seguro medico que tanto necesita mi hijo. Después de trabajar aquí por 15 años, aun cuando trabajo 6 días a la semana ni siquiera promedio las 30 horas. “Como puede Disney proponer algo así que lastimaría tanto a mi familia”.
“I am a single mother of two children. My 7 year old son has Cerebral Palsy as well as many other disabilities. With the company’s proposal of Casual Regular he would surely lose his much needed health insurance. As a 15 year employee, even when I work 6 days a week, I still don’t average 30 hours. How can Disney deny how much this proposal will hurt my family?”
Here is the information for the Protest. SI SE PUEDE!
Thursday, August 14th 4:30pm
Paradise Pier Hotel
1600 S. Disneyland Drive
4:30pm – Picket Line at the Paradise Pier Hotel
5:00pm – March from Paradise Pier Hotel to the Front Entrance of Disney (intersection of Harbor Blvd. and Disneyland Dr.).
6:00 pm – Action in front of Disneyland Entrance
Parking: Park at Downtown Disney Parking (3 Hours free) and then walk to the Paradise Pier Hotel. If you are arriving later that 5pm, then park at Downtown Disney and walk through the downtown walkway to the front of the Disneyland entrance on Harbor, and meet the marchers there.
For More Information, Call UNITE HERE: 714-750-4373 or 714-906-3942
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This is the blog of Edmundo "XicanoPwr" Rocha, a social worker, an activist, freelance writer and founder and editor of The Sanctuary. My interests include: immigration reform, critical race theory and it's interaction with equality/inequality and freedom/oppression as they relate to the experiences of people of color in the Americas.
Para Justicia y Libertad is a Latino-centered political blog focusing on the humanistic perspective of politics, history, and society as they relate to the Latina/o community throughout Texas and the United States.
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Thank you for drawing attention to this on your blog. At the very least, we can make more people aware of this situation with Disney.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. Yes, some people like Gloria Pena will be adversely affected but because labor is now cheaper and more flexible, more people can be employed – most of which will also be “housekeepers, bellmen, bartenders, dishwashers, and cooks who overwhelming are Latina/o”.
In addition, forcing companies to pay for healthcare is a bad way to help the poor. Since healthcare is a cost like any other, it forces the employers to provide their employees a service instead of higher pay that many may not need – when what that employee could have more used was a higher wage.
Richard Posner of the University Of Chicago explained it best when he wrote:
“Since the labor cost that an employer incurs is the sum of the wage he pays and the cost of any fringe benefits, forcing the employer to incur a total labor cost of $12,000 for an employee worth to the employer only $10,000 will simply cause that employee to be fired, with little prospect of obtaining another job; so he will lose his health insurance and be thrown back on Medicaid. Suppose instead that the employer is willing to incur a total labor cost of $12,000 for this employee, but the latter prefers a cash wage in that amount and no insurance, and now suppose as before that the employer is forced to insure him. The employer will reduce the employee’s wage to $10,000, which may inflict significant hardship because the employee needs the cash more than he wants insurance (if he has no assets, he may well not need or want any health insurance). Notice the perverse redistributive effect: the average taxpayer, who is indeed made better off because the employee is now paying for his own health care, is wealthier than the average low-income employee”.
Lastly, what Disneyland is doing to part time employees is no different than what all other companies do. If you work less than 30 hours per week, thats considered part time and you don’t get health insurance. As it should be…for the reasons mentioned above.
Hispanic Pundit has the right idea. Unlike the federal government who can run trillions of dollars in debt, corporations do not have that luxury. If they incur enough debt, their employees will not have to worry about health benefits and salary because the company will file for bankruptcy and they will be unemployed.
Disney’s hotels, theme parks and stores require a certain number of employees to keep it operating at a level that will keep customers satisfied. Paying more money to give the same benefits to part-time employees as full-time employees means less money to hire more employees or worse, keep some employees on the payroll.
Government doesn’t really have to worry about debt, which is why part-time employees (whose paychecks are obviously smaller than those of their full-time colleagues) should be able to turn to the government for health insurance. Unfortunately, some members of the working poor, for reasons only known to Congress, are not deemed poor enough to qualify for Medicaid or Medicare.
State-sponsored universal health care for those who cannot afford a private insurer is not a perfect solution for millions of uninsured Americans, but it’s a better and more realistic solution than using the law to force private companies to provide health benefits to its employees.
Besides, if the union cares so damn much about its low-wage workers, perhaps they shouldn’t make them pay union dues. If the unions don’t know where in their budget to cut expenses to allow low-wage workers free union membership, perhaps they should look at the six-figure salaries of their highest ranking officers. Most union bosses are paid very well, growing fat off the union dues of the working poor. That’s worse than any allegation of “corporate greed” that I could ever think of.
Go ahead, boycott Disney. Warner Bros. is funnier anyway and Six Flags theme parks are way better than Disney World.
Actually, if you do qualify for benefits you do get the choice of either opting in to a healthcare plan or opting out and receiving a higher wage. Nobody would be receiving a benefit they don’t need, at least based on the corporate policy I’m familiar with.
Also, it doesn’t make sense to compare Disney to GM and Ford. Disney, unlike Ford and GM, makes products people actually want to buy and they rake in tons of money.
Can you show me where you get your information from? Practically every company I know that has health care forces you to have it. Its the way health care works – its a pooling of all employees. If it worked the way you claim, then the people that don’t need health insurance would opt out – leaving the people who really need it with significantly higher health care coverage. If Disneyland is doing this, I’d like to see more details.
Disney, unlike Ford and GM, makes products people actually want to buy and they rake in tons of money.
Yes, but even Disneyland has to compete and sell tickets. And if their stock is any indicator, they are not doing so differently than Ford or GM.
I’m speaking as a former employee. Two of the last three companies I have worked for gave the “opt out” option. The company I’m currently with doesn’t charge premiums so it doesn’t make sense to opt out even though I use my wife’s insurance.
Also, note that their benefits are often considered relatively weak compared to other companies. It’s a major pain point for employees and an incentive to look elsewhere.
It’s dangerous to use a stock price as an indicator of how well a company is doing. Obviously, extreme performance can be a clear indicator, but the market price of a stock is more speculative and subjective to other market pressures rather than an accurate measure of performance. Entertainment is a very speculative industry because it ultimately relies on unpredictable consumer tastes.
I’m curious, if not the stock market, then what do you use as a measure of how well a company is doing?
Sales and profit reports, typically. In other words, the bottom line. How much do they sell? How much of that turns into profit? How much will they likely sell in the future? Take Nintendo for example. Their stock fluctuates wildly despite the fact that they rake in more sales and profits than any other video game company. Disney is also high on that list as well. Both companies take in a high ratio of profits relative to other companies in their industry. If you looked at stock performance alone it would be easy to guess otherwise.
But even looking at that, Disneyland does not look so good.
Look at their P/E, their profit margin, and their future prospects (reflected in the stock price)…and it doesn’t look as good as you make it seem. However you slice it, Disneyland is going through some tough times.
PS: I agree that the stock price alone is not the entire picture…but the stock price, or more directly, the P/E of a stock price is probably the one thing you can point to that gives more about a company than any other single indicator.
I did a little more research and here is what the WSJ has to say:
The company said attendance at its domestic resorts was off a bit from last year because this year’s busy Easter holiday fell during the previous quarter. At the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, Calif., both hotel occupancy and per-capita spending were down slightly from last year, but higher nightly room rates at the hotels helped offset the decline. Per-capita spending at Walt Disney World in Orlando was up 3%, while hotel occupancy, at 92%, was down 1% from the year-earlier period.
“We aren’t immune to the challenging economy but we continue to be pleased with the level of business activity we’ve seen so far,” Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger told analysts on the quarterly conference call. “The parks’ performance has been particularly noteworthy.” He added that visitation to Walt Disney World in Orlando was unlikely to be affected by a continuing reduction in airline seat capacity. “Just under 50% of visitors to Walt Disney World are flying in and they typically book early,” so there is plenty of access to available airplane seats, he said.
It does paint a growing picture of Disneyland, with growth rates of 9% over last year. But well see how that continues now that the dollar is gaining strength and we seem to be headed into a recession….maybe that is what Disneyland is bracing for by the elimination of healthcare?
Btw, the middle two paragraphs are from the WSJ – my quote html didn’t come through. The first and last paragraphs are me.
Very interesting, thanks for sharing. I’m actually not as familiar with the theme park side of the business. I just know that lately, from first-hand knowledge, their electronic side has been expanding fast to keep up with success, and their tv and movie side has been great as well with hot properties like High School Musical and Camp Rock. Price variables and labor activity are all symptoms of a free market. I think for somebody at the low end of the economic spectrum a strike or an effort to unionize is a huge undertaking and involves considerable financial and personal risk. If people are willing to do it it must indicate things are bad enough that they are willing to assume such a risk. I think companies should learn that in order to avoid such hassle they should just treat their employees fairly. Just as a company has to brace itself and deal with a variable such as fuel costs that they have no control over, they should deal with labor relations in way that keeps everybody happy, especially since they do have control over that.
Tengo un hijo trabajando part time en Disney y ya le dieron la permanencia. Deseo saber si este tendra el benefico de plan medico aunque el tenga que pagar la mitad. Necesito corroborar esa informacion porque me preocupa que pueda pasarle algo y no tenga cubierta medica lejos de su pais de procedencia. Si alguien me puede orientar se lo agradecere. Una madre preocupada.
Labor relations should always be good to ensure the success of a company.-~:
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