Central Florida, home to the so-called “Most Magical Place on Earth,” is one of the areas hardest hit by the nation’s unaffordable housing crisis, exacerbated by the economic fallout of COVID-19 and zero enforceable limits on the ability of landlords to price-gouge renter households in pursuit of greater profits.
Workers of Orlando’s Disney World, who make what they describe as an unlivable wage for the area’s skyrocketing cost of living, say they’ve had enough.
Amid ongoing negotiations for a new contract, they’re calling for an immediate $3 hourly pay raise from Disney, which generated a revenue of nearly $83 billion this year — $28.7 billion in the company’s theme park division alone — in what Disney CEO Bob Chapek described as a “strong year” for the company.
But Disney workers, aka “cast members,” have a different story. The Service Trade Council Union, a coalition of six unions representing roughly 40,000 Disney workers in Orlando, plan to protest later this month if Disney fails to budge on bumping up their current offer.
“We work so hard,” Roselyn Rodriguez, a quick service restaurant employee of nearly four years at Walt Disney World, told Orlando Weekly. “We don’t deserve to [have to] get a second job in order to cover our needs.”
As labor writer Hamilton Nolan described it for In These Times magazine, Disney World is “a rare island of union power” in a state where less than 4 percent of its private-sector workforce is represented by a union. In 2018, unionized...
WASHINGTON, April 23 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s years-long campaign to undermine faith in U.S. elections has gained broad traction with the American public, a Reuters/Ipsos poll shows, p...