Disneyland workers want to strike - but love the magic
www.bbc.com
Workers at Disneyland are considering a strike because pay at the 'Happiest place on Earth' has left many unable to meet rent.

Cynthia “Cyn” Carranza meticulously scavenged for a shady parking spot in the car she called home.

The overnight custodian at Disneyland has to sleep during the day - a difficulty for anyone, let alone when you’re living in your car with two dogs. Ms Carranza says she makes $20.65 an hour (about £15.99) at the park but last summer, she couldn’t afford rent in this Southern California city where the average apartment can run more than $2,000 (about £1,550) a month.

…

Ms Carranza, like others who work at the park, detailed to the BBC the financial hardships that come with working at what’s supposed to be the “Happiest Place on Earth”. About 10,000 union workers at Disneyland - the first of 12 parks created around the globe - are threatening to strike over the wages and what they say are retaliatory anti-union practices.

Hundreds of workers protested outside the park this week, with an array of signs and pins showing Mickey Mouse’s gloved fist in defiance.

“Mickey would want fair pay,” workers chanted outside Disneyland near the park’s gates.

They voted almost unanimously to authorise strike action on Friday, just days before union contract negotiations for workers are set to resume.

  • Burstar@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    984·
    5 months ago

    To show how bad $20/hour is (some people might think that is a lot due to local situation) someone paying $2000/month rent should have $6666/month gross income (using 30% rule). That equates to just under $40/hour at 40hours/week.

    They are literally making half what they need to live.

    • HobbitFoot English
      30·
      5 months ago

      Part of the problem is that the main anti-Disney political coalition doesn’t want to address the local housing crisis; they want the region to go back to being a suburban sprawl.

      You could easily build dense housing in the area that meets the balloon test, but Disney doesn’t want to push it and the anti-coalition doesn’t want it either.

        • Billiam@lemmy.world
          21·
          5 months ago

          You’d need some serious regulation and enforcement. Company towns have historically been, uh… not great.

          For example, imagine Disney rents apartments cheap to their employees but still underpays them. Now they’re stuck working for Disney because they can’t afford the rent offsite and can’t save enough to quit.

            • Seleni@lemmy.world
              5·
              5 months ago

              Oh dear. Education has really failed this country.

              Even in cases where companies may have the workers’ best interests at heart, company towns ultimately lead to a lack of personal freedom. If churches are selected for residents at the company’s whim, that means that other denominations and entire religions are left out in the cold. Choices—whether bad or good—are taken out of the residents’ hands. Recreation is dictated by companies, and anything that may be perceived as uncouth or immoral is no longer an option. Personal exploration is thinned to none, and a utopia quickly becomes a force of oppression.

              In the case of less well-intentioned towns, matters get only worse. In some locations, companies would compensate workers with a scrip—a monetary substitute that was valid only at stores owned by that same company. As there were no competitors for these monopolistic stores, buildings, and services, the price was fully at the discretion of the owner. Housing costs, groceries, and other necessities then became exorbitantly priced.

              Since the company that owned the town knew that all the residents had steady, reliable jobs, some of them allowed shoppers who were financially strapped to simply charge goods and services to a tab as needed. Of course, this meant that workers quickly racked up large debts—debts they were obligated to settle before they ever even thought about leaving the town.

              As for the actual living conditions in such towns, they were far from the idyllic neighborhoods many might have aspired to. Houses were built as close together as physically possible, so as to allow the greatest number of workers to reside there. Besides lacking privacy and being shabbily built, one could only hope a home in the neighborhood didn’t fall victim to a fire, or else the whole lot would go up in flames. Beyond that, company towns were also typically surrounded by fences or guards. This was allegedly for the workers’ protection. But in areas throughout the South, the truth was rather transparent: as free laborers and convict laborers were housed in the same areas, both groups fell victim to equally abhorrent treatment.

              Please, go and read up on Company Towns. They were never a good thing, and often a very, very bad thing.

              • crusa187@lemmy.ml
                3·
                5 months ago

                As there were no competitors for these monopolistic stores, buildings, and services, the price was fully at the discretion of the owner. Housing costs, groceries, and other necessities then became exorbitantly priced.

                So you’re saying the entire country has been diminished into a company town? I guess this tracks considering the legalized bribery our corporate oligarchs leverage to control politicians and regulators.

                • Seleni@lemmy.world
                  3·
                  5 months ago

                  They’re certainly working on it.

                  The one thing we still have going for us today vs in the past is that debts used to be inheritable. So if/when a Company worker died (and they often did, as most Company Towns were formed around very dangerous jobs) then their wife and children were on the hook.

                  That meant that if their surviving family had no job, or money to pay off the debt, the Company basically owned them at that point. And the Company could even sell the debt to a person who could pay it—and that got the payee a slave.

                  (Yes, technically, the person who bought the debt had to pay their newly acquired person a wage, so that person could pay them back to earn their freedom. But as there were no laws as to what wage to set, all they had to do was pay their new indentured servant such a pittance and charge them such high fees for room & board that they would be stuck working for their new owner forever—and even pass the debt on to their heirs, if they ever had any.)

                  Or, the family could simply be sent to debtor’s prison to rot.

                  I expect to see these old laws make a comeback at some point, especially if they get Project 2025 rolling.

        • HobbitFoot English
          7·
          5 months ago

          They do in Florida because, until a few years ago, they had complete control over the municipal government they operated in.

          Disney has never had such control over the land around Disneyland.