While I'm sure there are a small variety of reasons, Screamscape was informed that one of the key reasons behind the WDW imitative was the once scheduled December 1st, 2016 launch of the new "Overtime Final Rule" from the US Department of Labor. While the new Overtime rule is currently on hold, pending litigation after a Federal judge in Texas set an injection in motion to stop it, the new Overtime law would have had a big affect on some of the various departments within Walt Disney World.
How? Well to summarize it briefly, the current Overtime laws allow for companies to create specific positions that are paid at a "Salary" level instead of "Hourly". Hourly pay is what most of the jobs at Walt Disney World (and elsewhere) are, where employees are paid a specific sum for every hour they work, and by the Federal labor laws once you work over 40 hours in a week, all hours beyond the first 40 are paid at an "Overtime" level which is typically 1.5-times the regular hourly wage. (ie: someone making $10 per hour, will get $15 per hour Overtime). Things are different for those in Salary positions, where they are paid a specific lump sum regardless of how many hours they work, removing the possibility of getting any overtime pay as long as they make at least $455 / week or $23,660 annually. Those levels were set decades ago and have never been overhauled to reflect inflation and the increase in pay levels over the years, so it isn't difficult at all for a salaried employee working a full-time schedule to make well over $23,660 a years. The new law that was to have gone into effect would have raised that bar significantly to require wages of $913 / week or $47,476 annually for them to be exempt from Overtime pay for hours worked beyond 40 per week.
This is where certain departments within Walt Disney World apparently began to panic, as Disney has long had a habit in most of their departments of creating a management structure that was fairly full of middle-management staff that were salaried positions making less than $47,476 annually. Now the new rule, if and when it does go info effect, would only affect those workers who were actually working over 40-hours a week, and in many departments I'm told that this wouldn't be an issue at all. However, while interviewing some anonymous WDW Cast Members (current and former) about the issue, we were told that some specific departments were quite guilty of expecting their salaried staff to work well over 40 hours a week on a regular basis to help their departments meet their budget expectations. While no one currently employed was willing to point a finger, one previous WDW Manager did tell us that during their employ that the Foods and Finance departments were known to be guilty of the practice at the time.
So suddenly Walt Disney World found themselves with a virtual platoon of low-paid middle-management CMs, all in Salary positions, threatening to put them into a very tricky pickle. This is a result of Walt Disney World's established management hierarchy system combined with their notorious reputation for paying CMs what was described simply as "horrible salaries" that were "well below average". The solution? Pretty much what we have been witnessing Walt Disney World unfold over the past two months, hopefully along with internal changes within the various departments where needed.
