The Walt Disney Co. has failed to pay 25,000 employees minimum wages mandated by voters in Anaheim, where Disneyland and its hotels are located, a state appeals court ruled Thursday.
California’s minimum wage is $15.50 an hour, higher than any state’s except Washington’s $15.74, and more than twice the federal minimum of $7.50 an hour. A number of local governments in California have mandated higher wages, including Anaheim under a ballot measure approved by voters in 2018.
It set wages at $15 an hour beginning in 2019, with increases of $1 each year until 2023, when further raises will be based on inflation. But the wage requirements apply only to employers who get city subsidies, such as tax rebates, and Disney argued that it was not receiving any subsidies, a claim the court rejected.
Anaheim voters, meanwhile, will decide Oct. 3 whether to increase minimum wages for hotel employees in the city to $25 an hour. The initiative was sponsored by unions who wanted it placed before the voters in November 2024, when turnout is likely to be larger, but pro-business members of the City Council voted last month to call a special election in October.
A 2018 study, “Working for the Mouse,” by Occidental College and the Economic Roundtable, found that the average Disneyland wage in 2017 was $13.36 an hour and that 11% of its employees reported having been homeless in the previous two years. Disney then increased its minimum wage to $15 an hour, $1 above the California minimum then...
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