Cast Member Pay & Labor Laws

[CntrlFlPete]

I've seen where a study came out recently that claims for one to be able to rent a two bedroom apartment, one would need $25.40 an hour in wages.

I feel there that in recent years many more folks have gone to school -- then they leave school w/ massive debt just to learn jobs do not pay too well for there have not been jobs available. This 'burden' in the top layers make it that much harder for the lower skilled jobs.

I do not know what the answer is for I feel as wages go up to $15 at a minimum, the cost of everything goes up to compensate which pushed low wage earners further back (just look at the increase in rents!).

EDIT to add the study was about Central FL rents

 

["El Gran Magnifico"]

The living wage talk is silly. This is not 1950 anymore. Living wage is no longer predicated on a single income scenario. It is based on a double income household. Been that way for a while.

Median household income is about 55k right now.

If you’re saying that a couple, who works at Disney - one working the EPCOT parking booth and the other taking your order at Columbia Harbor House should be making 62k a year. Well, that’s why we’re in the current situation. And let’s call it a difference of opinion.

 

[John park hopper]

Can you? You've just admitted to having no knowledge in the topic at hand, but chose to spread false information regardless in a thinly veiled attempt at self-affirmation. Disney could very easily "just pay more" if they chose to do so, but that's not what shareholders want.

If I'm not mistaken eliza61nyc is or has been a business owner and knows what she is talking about. IMO she does know what she is talking about and your attempt to discredit here is way off base

 

[eliza61nyc]

If I'm not mistaken eliza61nyc is or has been a business owner and knows what she is talking about. IMO she does know what she is talking about and your attempt to discredit here is way off base

No worries, usually when the name calling starts I know it's time to bail. lol I do try to admit that I don't know anything about how Disney works.
So I absolutely apologize to anyone who I gave the impression that I know how Disney works or even a big corporation runs, outside of being an investor and worse by education I'm a scientist. lol but from my late husbands business to my sibling owning 2 Mcdonalds to growing up in the family restaurant I can say increasing wages ain't as easy as people hear like to think. labor is a huge beast

I guess my main point is that in most scenarios wage increases are trickled down, not every job is going to pay 25, 30, 40 dollars a hour and truthfully from just my local area (and again I try to be honest and tell upfront I am from the North east. NYC and Philly, I do not know Orlando cost of living) every attempt to just through "more money" at the problem has ended up in disaster.

here's my question to the group. maybe I grew up different but when I was a kid some where along the line you knew that entry level jobs where just that. entry level. when you got that job in the mail room, you knew it was not the best pay and that you darn sure could not get a house, have a family etc etc. Do young people going to work at Disney really expect that working the line at 7 mines or serving food at Be our guest is going to get them a condo, a car, etc etc?

I recently retired and I sold the old guys business to his partners when he passed, I would love a PT gig at Disney if it wasn't for the heat.lol but Im smart enough to do the math and recognize it's a low wage gig and I darn sure wouldn't expect Disney pay me based on what I feel my standard of living should.

Lol if anyone's knows some one hiring like that please let me know, Ive been trying to get back to this little slice of heaven for decades

 

[Lilofan]

No worries, usually when the name calling starts I know it's time to bail. lol I do try to admit that I don't know anything about how Disney works.
So I absolutely apologize to anyone who I gave the impression that I know how Disney works or even a big corporation runs, outside of being an investor and worse by education I'm a scientist. lol but from my late husbands business to my sibling owning 2 Mcdonalds to growing up in the family restaurant I can say increasing wages ain't as easy as people hear like to think. labor is a huge beast

I guess my main point is that in most scenarios wage increases are trickled down, not every job is going to pay 25, 30, 40 dollars a hour and truthfully from just my local area (and again I try to be honest and tell upfront I am from the North east. NYC and Philly, I do not know Orlando cost of living) every attempt to just through "more money" at the problem has ended up in disaster.

here's my question to the group. maybe I grew up different but when I was a kid some where along the line you knew that entry level jobs where just that. entry level. when you got that job in the mail room, you knew it was not the best pay and that you darn sure could not get a house, have a family etc etc. Do young people going to work at Disney really expect that working the line at 7 mines or serving food at Be our guest is going to get them a condo, a car, etc etc?

A one bedroom apt in NYC or Philly will probably get you just a small old box to live in for $1.5K a month but at that price one could get a newish nice apt, washer dryer inside apt, clubhouse, tennis courts, swimming pool and workout gym in a gated Central FL apt complex.

 

[eliza61nyc]

A one bedroom apt in NYC or Philly will probably get you just a small old box to live in for $1.5K a month but at that price one could get a newish nice apt, washer dryer inside apt, clubhouse, tennis courts, swimming pool and workout gym in a gated Central FL apt complex.

Don't even get me started on Philly Lilofan, ever since we hosted the NFL draft a few years ago prices have been insane. No way could my son's even remotely think they could get an apartment while working at Wawa.

I guess that's my disconnect do folks really think that?

 

[John park hopper]

I can identify with you eliza (little older than you) growing up I worked through High school entry level jobs minimum pay that were not going anywhere, got drafted and bunch of us one time calculated how much an hour we were being paid I seem to remember 25 cents an hour to put or lives on the line. Came to the conclusion I needed a skill or education upon discharge went to college. My sons did minimum wage jobs during the summer went to college doing well.

 

[stratman50th]

No worries, usually when the name calling starts I know it's time to bail. lol I do try to admit that I don't know anything about how Disney works.
So I absolutely apologize to anyone who I gave the impression that I know how Disney works or even a big corporation runs, outside of being an investor and worse by education I'm a scientist. lol but from my late husbands business to my sibling owning 2 Mcdonalds to growing up in the family restaurant I can say increasing wages ain't as easy as people hear like to think. labor is a huge beast

I guess my main point is that in most scenarios wage increases are trickled down, not every job is going to pay 25, 30, 40 dollars a hour and truthfully from just my local area (and again I try to be honest and tell upfront I am from the North east. NYC and Philly, I do not know Orlando cost of living) every attempt to just through "more money" at the problem has ended up in disaster.

here's my question to the group. maybe I grew up different but when I was a kid some where along the line you knew that entry level jobs where just that. entry level. when you got that job in the mail room, you knew it was not the best pay and that you darn sure could not get a house, have a family etc etc. Do young people going to work at Disney really expect that working the line at 7 mines or serving food at Be our guest is going to get them a condo, a car, etc etc?

I recently retired and I sold the old guys business to his partners when he passed, I would love a PT gig at Disney if it wasn't for the heat.lol but Im smart enough to do the math and recognize it's a low wage gig and I darn sure wouldn't expect Disney pay me based on what I feel my standard of living should.

Lol if anyone's knows some one hiring like that please let me know, Ive been trying to get back to this little slice of heaven for decades

I already live in central Florida so that part is behind me. I'll probably be retiring in a year or so and wonder what I'll do to keep occupied. I don't know your exact situation, but I gather from previous posts that with your retirement you could probably afford to do a part time gig at Disney if you wanted since it's probably more about having something to do?
EDIT: I told my wife maybe I'd like to work for the mouse driving the boats. She said I'd last less than a week commuting down 4 then I'd quit. She's probably right.

 

[eliza61nyc]

I already live in central Florida so that part is behind me. I'll probably be retiring in a year or so and wonder what I'll do to keep occupied. I don't know your exact situation, but I gather from previous posts that with your retirement you could probably afford to do a part time gig at Disney if you wanted since it's probably more about having something to do?

Isn't it ironic @stratman50th that no matter the stage of life the concept is the same. Now that I'm retired one thing I do have to be concerned with is the cost of living in my area. It's why many retirees do relocate to lower cost of living areas.
I don't have the option of going to my 401k provider and saying hey I need a raise because I can't live on this salary and while ss does give small increases The average annual benefit is around 15k. I wonder what would happen if all the seniors said hey that's not enough to live on I need you to raise it to 20k a year. A bit if hyperbole but fun to think about

 

[Disstevefan1]

I know this thread is about pay, but more important than pay is how employees are treated by theirs company’s leadership at all levels. Money is great, but raises are soon forgotten if the work environment is bad.

TWDC can’t control how the guests treat the cast members, but they can create a work environment that respect AND VALUES their employees contributions at every level.

 

[lazyboy97o]

It’s funny how there are so many people who love to spend large sums of money at Walt Disney World but absolutely hate the idea of that money going to people at Walt Disney World, preferring it to go to people elsewhere many of whom think they’re idiots for wasting money at a place like Walt Disney World.

 

[Jrb1979]

If only all companies followed the way Costco feels about their employees things would be much better.

 

[eliza61nyc]

It’s funny how there are so many people who love to spend large sums of money at Walt Disney World but absolutely hate the idea of that money going to people at Walt Disney World, preferring it to go to people elsewhere many of whom think they’re idiots for wasting money at a place like Walt Disney World.

I like to think I'm a moderate realist. Lol a term that's probably made up. I think it's a combination of both good corporate stewardship and personal responsibility.
I want the company to offer competitive salaries based on the position not based on whether the person thinks they're worth it or not. Based on industry best practices perhaps more to retain good employees.
I want them to offer a safe, abuse free work environment and I've said over and over that the cm's absolutely deserve that.

I want my son's to work for a good company that values them AND have common sense to know that if they are a security guard they will NOT be making 40 dollars an hour no matter how many hours they work.

I want my youngest to know that WaWa is a great family own company that could be a great opportunity AND to realize that no matter how great the company PUMPING GAS is not a livable wage job. EVER. so if he decides to stay there 15 years don't whine that the company owes you a livable wage simply because they made a profit.

Thankfully they are learning that lesson

 

[stratman50th]

I like to think I'm a moderate realist. Lol a term that's probably made up. I think it's a combination of both good corporate stewardship and personal responsibility.
I want my son's to work for a good company that values them AND have common sense to know that if they are a security guard they will NOT be making 40 dollars an hour no matter how many hours they work.
I want my youngest to know that WaWa is a great family own company that could be a great opportunity AND to realize that no matter how great the company PUMPING GAS is not a livable wage job. EVER so if he decides to stay there 15 years don't whine that the company owes you a livable wage simply because they made a profit. Thankfully they are learning that lesson

My daughter is 26. I can't steer her life, but I hope that at some point she has a career and not just a job.

 

[Jrb1979]

Reading through this thread I have a hard time relating to younger people now. It seems that many seem to value a job they like over a job that gives you a certain kind of lifestyle.

An example, I don't love my job and most days are very stressful but cause of the money I make I put up with it. Due to that money, I'm able to do things in life I enjoy doing. Being able to travel, have a trailer to visit all summer, and go to live sporting events.

It's hard to understand how anyone would a want fulfilling job that pays little. Do people not want to enjoy life outside of work anymore?

 

["El Gran Magnifico"]

It’s funny how there are so many people who love to spend large sums of money at Walt Disney World but absolutely hate the idea of that money going to people at Walt Disney World

I don't think people hate the idea of money going to the people working at Walt Disney World. It's a question of how much should a position pay. Take Sally, who works the queue at Thunder Mountain. What's a fair salary? I'd argue that $25,000 (~$12/hr) a year for that type of position is fair (With tenure a bit more). I'm not going to WDW to interact with Sally. I'm going to ride Thunder Mountain. Sally is not contributing to the marketing efforts, she's also not involved with the operations aspect of the ride. She had no input on where I stayed or the type of ticket I purchased. If something breaks - she's not paying to fix it. She shows up, works her spot, smiles, and has some interaction (and deals with some unpleasant situations) with guests. She bears none of the financial risk. And she is not uniquely qualified for her position.

If Sally has her heart set on a 3 bedroom house, wants to drive a new model car, vacation in a 5 star resort, and live on her own - it's on her to attain the skills (either by moving up the ladder or gaining experience and moving on elsewhere) to do so.

Sally's salary is not and should not be tied to any amount that a guest spends or that Disney makes.

 

[Lilofan]

Reading through this thread I have a hard time relating to younger people now. It seems that many seem to value a job they like over a job that gives you a certain kind of lifestyle.

An example, I don't love my job and most days are very stressful but cause of the money I make I put up with it. Due to that money, I'm able to do things in life I enjoy doing. Being able to travel, have a trailer to visit all summer, and go to live sporting events.

It's hard to understand how anyone would a want fulfilling job that pays little. Do people not want to enjoy life outside of work anymore?

There are professions that are high stress such as RNs that pay well. One flight pre covid, I took to MCO had a few nurses on a getaway to WDW for stress relief on their 4 days off that week. They work a schedule of 3 days on, 4 days off.

 

[lentesta]

A couple of years ago, @lentesta did the math and for Walt Disney World to offer a living wage (I believe he used MIT’s calculator) and maintain the same profit margins, cost increases would be measured in cents. This is something we’re seeing across the board with larger companies. They absolutely can afford to pay better and Disney in particular used to pay better and treat employees better.

Here's the math behind the discussion:

Background: Text in gray is an email from a listener named Sue. It’s a response to a show we did off an Orlando Sentinel article about Mike Beaver, Tomorrowland CM who lives in a motel and commutes 45-minutes each way to his job in Tomorrowland. Mike makes $13.02 per hour.

Text in blue is my set of show notes to points raised in the letter.

Hi Len,

Just listened to some of the most recent podcasts on band camp.......we drove back and forth to NYC from Orlando and you and Jim really helped to entertain us on a rather dull drive.

One of the recent ones you and Jim were talking about the cast member who spends a lot of time getting to his job on the bus, I saw his story on the local news a few weeks ago. And I was interested in your view point about a living wage. We are originally from one of what I like to call the welfare states/city NYC where this very issue is a hot topic. I am not sure what a living wage is and what the entitlement should be.

For the record, as you’d expect, I’m generally a “what do the data say?” guy when it comes to policy and politics. But everyone’s outlook on these things has a political leaning. Mine is basically the love child of Angela Merkel and Paul Krugman. I’m a liberal.

Let’s talk about a living wage. More information is here: http://livingwage.mit.edu/pages/about

The living wage is the minimum income standard that, if met, draws a very fine line between the financial independence of the working poor and the need to seek out public assistance or suffer consistent and severe housing and food insecurity.

The living wage model is an alternative measure of basic needs. It is a market-based approach that draws upon geographically specific expenditure data related to a family’s likely minimum food, childcare, health insurance, housing, transportation, and other basic necessities (e.g. clothing, personal care items, etc.) costs. The living wage draws on these cost elements and the rough effects of income and payroll taxes to determine the minimum employment earnings necessary to meet a family’s basic needs while also maintaining self-sufficiency.

The living wage model is a ‘step up’ from poverty as measured by the poverty thresholds but it is a small ‘step up’, one that accounts for only the basic needs of a family.

The living wage model does not allow for what many consider the basic necessities enjoyed by many Americans. It does not budget funds for:

• Pre-prepared meals or those eaten in restaurants
• Entertainment
• Leisure time for unpaid vacations or holidays
• A financial means for planning for the future through savings and investment or for the purchase of capital assets (e.g. provisions for retirement or home purchases).

The living hourly wage for one adult is $11.51 in Osceola and Orange counties. So Mike makes $1.51/hour more than that, around $60/week or $3,100 per year.
For two adults both working full-time, it’s $9.06/hour each.
For two adults with one full-time and one part-time it’s $12.08.
For two adults and one child it’s $13.54 per adult
For one adult and one child is $24.07.
Those numbers are interesting, because they combine with Disney’s hourly wage to tell you that Disney thinks of front-line customer service as something that a household of “one or two people with no dependents” does. Because that’s what the pay can support.

Do I think an excellent attitude and work ethic should be rewarded? Yes I do, merit increases is the way to go, but many times unions prevent that......not sure if this is the case within disney.

Merit raises and unions is an interesting idea, because when we think of unions and wages, we think primarily of collective bargaining, which is on the opposite end of ‘merit raises’.

There are lots of studies on the wage effects of unions. The results are generally predictable by political affiliation. And here I’m using the political affiliation rankings of https://mediabiasfactcheck.com. You can look up there where your favorite news outlet sits on the political spectrum.

The National Bureau of Economic Research is one of many organizations rated “least biased” by MediaBiasFactCheck. And it happens that the NBER has a number of studies on the effect of unions and wages. In one 2002 study of 17 countries including the U.S., by David Blanchflower and Alex Bryson, it was reported that unions raise wages about 12% higher than they would be otherwise. http://www.nber.org/papers/w9395

That’s in line with a 2013 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that looked at U.S. union and non-union hourly wages annually from 2001 to 2011. It showed that hourly wages for unionized workers were 18-24% higher than non-union jobs. https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/04/art2full.pdf

So there’s some indication that even if unions prevent merit increases, the overall effect of unions is higher wages for workers.

So I checked with the BLS to see if they could tell me what the average hourly wage is for non-union theme park workers. It turns out that they actually track this too (https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes393091.htm). And the average wage in 2016 for the quarter-million non-union theme park workers in the U.S. was around $10.58.

Note that that’s less than the living hourly wage in WDW. In fact, the 75th percentile wage is $11.38, still under the living hourly wage for one adult.

So while we can’t know what Disney would set wages at without a union, and we don’t know what Mike’s wages would be without a union and just based on his personal merit, there’s some evidence that Disney’s overall wages would be lower without the union.

All of that being said how much more are you willing to pay for admission and meals on property? Because the increases have to come from somewhere.

This is a great question.

Around 37,000 WDW workers are represented by the unions. http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/11/news/companies/disney-workers-union/index.html

Let’s say we wanted to get Mike to where he could get married to another CM and support a kid on a living wage. We’d need to bump up the Mike’s wage by $0.52/hour. Let’s assume that all 37,000 union workers get the same wage, they work 2080 hours per year, and they all need the $0.52 raise.

That’s an additional cost of 37,000 x 2080 x 0.52 = $40,019,200 per year

According to Trefis.com, a site that breaks down SEC reports, Disney’s domestic parks made $15.4 billion in 2016. 2/3rds of Disney’s theme parks are in Orlando, the vast majority of its hotel rooms, and all of its water parks. Let’s say 75% of its domestic theme park income - around $11.5 billion - comes from WDW.

https://www.trefis.com/stock/dis/mo...1dc8d8f6232d98165778fd8d&from=widget:forecast

$40 million is about 1/3rd of 1% of $11.5 billion, so Disney’s prices would need to go up by that amount in order to cover this wage increase.

A bottle of water would rise in price from $3.00 to $3.01. A bottle of Coke would similarly rise from $3.50 to $3.51.

An adult dinner buffet at Biergarten would rise from $40 to $40.14.

A room at Pop Century during a peak weekend night currently costs $208. That would increase by $0.73.

One thing we in Orange County could do would be to provide lower cost housing, subsidized so that this CM could get out of that hotel room. As for his one hour bus ride, that was my commute in NYC everyday.......I cannot get to excited about that.

This is an interesting scenario. If a company doesn’t provide a living wage to its full-time workers, taxpayers subsidies can help. It’s similar to what we see with Walmart, where a substantial percentage of their workers receive taxpayer subsidies.

Lastly I am not sure these entry level jobs are or were meant to be careers and the wage is not meant to support someone.

Part of this seems to be a true assumption: the median tenure for all service workers in the US, according to the BLS, is around 3 years.

Also, we can look at the wages and say “Your paycheck is telling you that this is an entry-level job.” You can see by the living wage analysis that the job pays enough for one person not to regularly depend on government assistance. It doesn’t pay enough to raise a child or care for anyone else.

Plus, you know, some portion of these workers have spouses with much better-paying jobs. I know of a few CMs for whom this is literally their ‘retirement job’. They own their home and make enough money here to pay their food and utility bills each month, so they don’t have to use their savings.

On the other hand, the average job tenure for Disney is around 8 years. So clearly, lots of people are making this their job. (http://articles.orlandosentinel.com...SNEYWAGES20_1_wage-scales-unions-disney-world)

Why is the average tenure 8 years? It could be that Disney pays higher-than-average wages for the area. In Orlando, for example, restaurant workers average $12.53/hour and service workers average $11.99. (https://www.bls.gov/regions/southea...tionalemploymentandwages_orlando_20170608.pdf)

Our property taxes are pretty high in Orange County so I am not sure where the money could come from to help on the housing issue. Maybe 1/2% in sales tax could help fund this. It is an issue every large city is coping with.....affordable housing but it needs to be done in such a way that it just doesn't turn into tenements. In brooklyn there is a development called starrett city which is 40 years old and as nice as it was when it was built. The criteria for getting an apartment was that you had to have a job, there was no welfare recipients. It has really worked.

This is an interesting question too. I’d ask it this way: Disney made $2.8 billion in profit off its theme parks in 2016. Why do taxpayers have to subsidize Disney’s employees so those employees can earn a living? Shouldn’t that fall on Disney’s shareholders and customers?

 

[lazyboy97o]

I don't think people hate the idea of money going to the people working at Walt Disney World. It's a question of how much should a position pay. Take Sally, who works the queue at Thunder Mountain. What's a fair salary? I'd argue that $25,000 (~$12/hr) a year for that type of position is fair (With tenure a bit more). I'm not going to WDW to interact with Sally. I'm going to ride Thunder Mountain. Sally is not contributing to the marketing efforts, she's also not involved with the operations aspect of the ride. She had no input on where I stayed or the type of ticket I purchased. If something breaks - she's not paying to fix it. She shows up, works her spot, smiles, and has some interaction (and deals with some unpleasant situations) with guests. She bears none of the financial risk. And she is not uniquely qualified for her position.

If Sally has her heart set on a 3 bedroom house, wants to drive a new model car, vacation in a 5 star resort, and live on her own - it's on her to attain the skills (either by moving up the ladder or gaining experience and moving on elsewhere) to do so.

Sally's salary is not and should not be tied to any amount that a guest spends or that Disney makes.

Starting at that last comment, it can’t be both ways. The constant refrain is that people would balk at the prices necessary to pay higher wages. So either wages are tied to prices or they are not. It also ignores the long standing trend across the board that wages have stagnated while prices have increased and profits have soared.

I haven’t said anything close to an attraction attendant being able to afford a three bedroom house and a new car. I find the definition of a living wage to be nebulous and think legislating it means dictating all sorts of value judgements. I am also though aware of how the situation has changed and been strained by decades of policy that has done things like encouraged sprawl and effectively outlawed a huge range of housing typologies that makes new apartment, car and significant gas money the default.

An operation at the scale of Walt Disney World can’t operate on seasonal and temporary labor. Unless you only want it open during the summer with far less the pay at even the bottom levels needs to support some level of independence, and that doesn’t mean a BMW and McMansion for one.

It’s not just pay. The general attitude towards lower wage employees has been that they are disposable garbage. Disney in particular can be a nightmare where abusive guests are rewarded and employees politely enforcing the “rules” are punished. They’re viewed as expendable in a variety of ways.

 

["El Gran Magnifico"]

Here's the math behind the discussion:

Background: Text in gray is an email from a listener named Sue. It’s a response to a show we did off an Orlando Sentinel article about Mike Beaver, Tomorrowland CM who lives in a motel and commutes 45-minutes each way to his job in Tomorrowland. Mike makes $13.02 per hour.

Text in blue is my set of show notes to points raised in the letter.

Hi Len,

Just listened to some of the most recent podcasts on band camp.......we drove back and forth to NYC from Orlando and you and Jim really helped to entertain us on a rather dull drive.

One of the recent ones you and Jim were talking about the cast member who spends a lot of time getting to his job on the bus, I saw his story on the local news a few weeks ago. And I was interested in your view point about a living wage. We are originally from one of what I like to call the welfare states/city NYC where this very issue is a hot topic. I am not sure what a living wage is and what the entitlement should be.

For the record, as you’d expect, I’m generally a “what do the data say?” guy when it comes to policy and politics. But everyone’s outlook on these things has a political leaning. Mine is basically the love child of Angela Merkel and Paul Krugman. I’m a liberal.

Let’s talk about a living wage. More information is here: http://livingwage.mit.edu/pages/about

The living wage is the minimum income standard that, if met, draws a very fine line between the financial independence of the working poor and the need to seek out public assistance or suffer consistent and severe housing and food insecurity.

The living wage model is an alternative measure of basic needs. It is a market-based approach that draws upon geographically specific expenditure data related to a family’s likely minimum food, childcare, health insurance, housing, transportation, and other basic necessities (e.g. clothing, personal care items, etc.) costs. The living wage draws on these cost elements and the rough effects of income and payroll taxes to determine the minimum employment earnings necessary to meet a family’s basic needs while also maintaining self-sufficiency.

The living wage model is a ‘step up’ from poverty as measured by the poverty thresholds but it is a small ‘step up’, one that accounts for only the basic needs of a family.

The living wage model does not allow for what many consider the basic necessities enjoyed by many Americans. It does not budget funds for:

• Pre-prepared meals or those eaten in restaurants
• Entertainment
• Leisure time for unpaid vacations or holidays
• A financial means for planning for the future through savings and investment or for the purchase of capital assets (e.g. provisions for retirement or home purchases).

The living hourly wage for one adult is $11.51 in Osceola and Orange counties. So Mike makes $1.51/hour more than that, around $60/week or $3,100 per year.
For two adults both working full-time, it’s $9.06/hour each.
For two adults with one full-time and one part-time it’s $12.08.
For two adults and one child it’s $13.54 per adult
For one adult and one child is $24.07.
Those numbers are interesting, because they combine with Disney’s hourly wage to tell you that Disney thinks of front-line customer service as something that a household of “one or two people with no dependents” does. Because that’s what the pay can support.

Do I think an excellent attitude and work ethic should be rewarded? Yes I do, merit increases is the way to go, but many times unions prevent that......not sure if this is the case within disney.

Merit raises and unions is an interesting idea, because when we think of unions and wages, we think primarily of collective bargaining, which is on the opposite end of ‘merit raises’.

There are lots of studies on the wage effects of unions. The results are generally predictable by political affiliation. And here I’m using the political affiliation rankings of https://mediabiasfactcheck.com. You can look up there where your favorite news outlet sits on the political spectrum.

The National Bureau of Economic Research is one of many organizations rated “least biased” by MediaBiasFactCheck. And it happens that the NBER has a number of studies on the effect of unions and wages. In one 2002 study of 17 countries including the U.S., by David Blanchflower and Alex Bryson, it was reported that unions raise wages about 12% higher than they would be otherwise. http://www.nber.org/papers/w9395

That’s in line with a 2013 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that looked at U.S. union and non-union hourly wages annually from 2001 to 2011. It showed that hourly wages for unionized workers were 18-24% higher than non-union jobs. https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/04/art2full.pdf

So there’s some indication that even if unions prevent merit increases, the overall effect of unions is higher wages for workers.

So I checked with the BLS to see if they could tell me what the average hourly wage is for non-union theme park workers. It turns out that they actually track this too (https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes393091.htm). And the average wage in 2016 for the quarter-million non-union theme park workers in the U.S. was around $10.58.

Note that that’s less than the living hourly wage in WDW. In fact, the 75th percentile wage is $11.38, still under the living hourly wage for one adult.

So while we can’t know what Disney would set wages at without a union, and we don’t know what Mike’s wages would be without a union and just based on his personal merit, there’s some evidence that Disney’s overall wages would be lower without the union.

All of that being said how much more are you willing to pay for admission and meals on property? Because the increases have to come from somewhere.

This is a great question.

Around 37,000 WDW workers are represented by the unions. http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/11/news/companies/disney-workers-union/index.html

Let’s say we wanted to get Mike to where he could get married to another CM and support a kid on a living wage. We’d need to bump up the Mike’s wage by $0.52/hour. Let’s assume that all 37,000 union workers get the same wage, they work 2080 hours per year, and they all need the $0.52 raise.

That’s an additional cost of 37,000 x 2080 x 0.52 = $40,019,200 per year

According to Trefis.com, a site that breaks down SEC reports, Disney’s domestic parks made $15.4 billion in 2016. 2/3rds of Disney’s theme parks are in Orlando, the vast majority of its hotel rooms, and all of its water parks. Let’s say 75% of its domestic theme park income - around $11.5 billion - comes from WDW.

https://www.trefis.com/stock/dis/mo...1dc8d8f6232d98165778fd8d&from=widget:forecast

$40 million is about 1/3rd of 1% of $11.5 billion, so Disney’s prices would need to go up by that amount in order to cover this wage increase.

A bottle of water would rise in price from $3.00 to $3.01. A bottle of Coke would similarly rise from $3.50 to $3.51.

An adult dinner buffet at Biergarten would rise from $40 to $40.14.

A room at Pop Century during a peak weekend night currently costs $208. That would increase by $0.73.

One thing we in Orange County could do would be to provide lower cost housing, subsidized so that this CM could get out of that hotel room. As for his one hour bus ride, that was my commute in NYC everyday.......I cannot get to excited about that.

This is an interesting scenario. If a company doesn’t provide a living wage to its full-time workers, taxpayers subsidies can help. It’s similar to what we see with Walmart, where a substantial percentage of their workers receive taxpayer subsidies.

Lastly I am not sure these entry level jobs are or were meant to be careers and the wage is not meant to support someone.

Part of this seems to be a true assumption: the median tenure for all service workers in the US, according to the BLS, is around 3 years.

Also, we can look at the wages and say “Your paycheck is telling you that this is an entry-level job.” You can see by the living wage analysis that the job pays enough for one person not to regularly depend on government assistance. It doesn’t pay enough to raise a child or care for anyone else.

Plus, you know, some portion of these workers have spouses with much better-paying jobs. I know of a few CMs for whom this is literally their ‘retirement job’. They own their home and make enough money here to pay their food and utility bills each month, so they don’t have to use their savings.

On the other hand, the average job tenure for Disney is around 8 years. So clearly, lots of people are making this their job. (http://articles.orlandosentinel.com...SNEYWAGES20_1_wage-scales-unions-disney-world)

Why is the average tenure 8 years? It could be that Disney pays higher-than-average wages for the area. In Orlando, for example, restaurant workers average $12.53/hour and service workers average $11.99. (https://www.bls.gov/regions/southea...tionalemploymentandwages_orlando_20170608.pdf)

Our property taxes are pretty high in Orange County so I am not sure where the money could come from to help on the housing issue. Maybe 1/2% in sales tax could help fund this. It is an issue every large city is coping with.....affordable housing but it needs to be done in such a way that it just doesn't turn into tenements. In brooklyn there is a development called starrett city which is 40 years old and as nice as it was when it was built. The criteria for getting an apartment was that you had to have a job, there was no welfare recipients. It has really worked.

This is an interesting question too. I’d ask it this way: Disney made $2.8 billion in profit off its theme parks in 2016. Why do taxpayers have to subsidize Disney’s employees so those employees can earn a living? Shouldn’t that fall on Disney’s shareholders and customers?

I remember that article. I also remember a lot of things not necessarily jiving. As an example:

"He splits the $250 weekly rent at a Kissimmee motel with his friend, a long-time chef at a Disney resort."

So his total monthly is ~2100 let's say take home at ~1700 - and he pays $500/mnth. His utilities are tied to his room fee. He's has no car payments. Where exactly is the other $1200 a month going?

To put it another way, he and his chef friend are making a combined $52,000 (I'm averaging the $13 x 172 monthly work hours). I'm sorry but $52k a year should suffice for a decent 2 bedroom apartment w/utilities - reliable transportation - and a healthy food budget.
That 52k back in 2017 is akin to closer to 55k today which puts them at the national medium household level.

Further in the article there is something that may be very telling. (Maybe it's not - maybe it is):

In his spare time, Beaver plays online poker and dreams of entering the World Series of Poker.