Walt Disney Heiress Slams CEO Over Theme Park's Poor Working Conditions

Filmmaker and activist Abigail Disney isn't too happy with how Disneyland employees are being treated.

Disney, a Walt Disney Co. heiress, told human rights activist Zainab Salbi in the weekly show “Through Her Eyes” that she had always had quibbles with how the company had done things.

Disney met with employees after recieving a message from a Disneyland worker through Facebook asking for help.

“I sat with those workers in Anaheim. I looked them in the eye, and it was intolerable for me,” she said. “I was so livid when I came out of there.”

In a study by Dreier and Flaming in February 2018, 73 percent of the five thousand workers surveyed said that they do not earn enough money to cover the monthly basic expenses. Around 11 percent of employees reported having experienced being homeless or sleeping in a friend’s place in the past two years.

More than half of employees who are parents said their inconsistent schedule at the park make it difficult to give time for their children and families.

In a Washington Post opinion in April, Abigail Disney already called out Walt Disney CEO Robert Iger on the large pay gap between executives and workers.

Iger made $65 million in 2018, which Disney claimed to be more than a thousand times greater than the median pay of a Disneyland worker.

She compared the figures to the 1978 pay of an average CEO which was only 30 times greater than the average worker, questioning why CEO pay has now grown by 937 percent and the worker pay upped only by about 11 percent.

“I believe that Disney could well lead the way, if its leaders so chose, to a more decent, humane way of doing business,” wrote Disney in the opinion piece.

The Walt Disney Company already responded with a public statement.

“We strongly disagree with this characterization of our employees and their experience at Disney. This widely reported stunt is a gross and unfair exaggeration of the facts...” the company wrote.

“At our parks in Orlando and Anaheim, The Walt Disney Company currently pays its hourly workers an average of $19.50 an hour, significantly above the federal minimum wage.”

The company also expressed understanding in complex challenges that workers and families face and stated that it provides a wide range of benefits and initiatives for workers such as subsidized childcare, generous leave policies, and free college degrees.

Abigail Disney responded in a tweet.

“You can divert attention with irrelevant facts. That still won’t change what is factually true. Everyone deserves a living wage,” she writes in a tweet that quotes news of the company’s response.

At $19.50 per hour, a Disneyland worker earns more than three thousand dollars per month. In a Coloradoan article, the monthly cost of living in California’s most expensive city is estimated at more than six thousand dollars and about 35 percent of that cost goes to housing expenses.