Disney executives have come up with the answer to rock bottom Cast Member morale

[Smiley/OCD]

I agree with yout historical views of sweatshops. However, it was piece work that allowed my mother-in-law to build her business. She came from Italy with almost nothing but her sewing skills. She not only worked during the day but brought work home so she could make extra money to buy a home and then a small business. Unfortunately, thanks to the way the unions eliminated piece work, we have no more garment industry. It has been exported to China. The immigrants to the US were and are hard working people and were willing to work. They are not asking for handouts but opportunity.
Americans on the otherhand are lazy and want everything handed to them. The idea that many here think working 40 hours a week doing anything should provide them with an income that would give them a nice home, car, furniture, jewelry and expensive clothes and yes yearly vacations to the Orlando themeparks, show how foolish they are. My Mother-in-law worked 60 to 70 hours a week, built a successful business and achieved the American Dream, but only because of her hard word and desire for her daughter to have a nice life. Today, many here think just because they were born here the deserve everything. Life is not easy and shouldn't be. Work hard, study, take steps to improve yourself and don't spend more than you make. It is easy to build wealth if you are willing to work hard and save something every week. My father taught me there are two ways to make money, you at work and your money at work, and your money at work is easier. Save, invest and in the future live off your money's work. Don't ask for others to pay for your lifestyle, pay for it yourself. It may be hard but it is rewarding.

I agree 100%...this is no longer the land of opportunity, it's the land of entitlement. I've seen this happen numerous times in my career...you hire 2 people, one works the minimum requirements, and one goes above and beyond. The minimum worker belittles the achiever and says "You idiot! What are you busting your a** for?" As I said, I worked in management...I'm NOT a union guy. Never was. They were good back in those days of sweat shops, but now...

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Wow, this has to be the most toxic and politically charged thread I've seen here a while.

…whew…I’ve got doozies for you!

 

[Smiley/OCD]

Well I’m saying Cast Members should be paid a living wage. I’m not really familiar with the Home Depot business.

You are certainly entitled to your opinion and I admire your passion for that point, but just like Disney is an "at will" employer, You, as the employee, are also "at will". When you start the process, and go to "Traditions" to become a CM, you know what you'll be earning to start...If, after a month or so, if you feel like they're working you to death, you start looking for another job. Chances are, that job won't pay "living wages" either. We have a neighbor at the end of our block who started in the college program...she ended up doing 3 "stints" with the CP, was hired FT, worked her way up and in less than 5 years is now in a management position. I NEVER hear her complain because she loves what she does, and was WILLING to work above and beyond expectations to better herself. She KNEW she wasn't going to survive working for the mouse without an advancement. At the end of the day, a person has to take responsibility for his or her life.

 

[TrainsOfDisney]

she ended up doing 3 "stints" with the CP, was hired FT, worked her way up and in less than 5 years is now in a management position. I NEVER hear her complain because she loves what she does, and was WILLING to work above and beyond expectations to better herself. She KNEW she wasn't going to survive working for the mouse without an advancement. At the end of the day, a person has to take responsibility for his or her life.

That’s great. I’m not against people moving up within a company. Nor do I expect anyone to be paid an executive level salary when first hiring on at WDW. But I expect them to be paid enough to not qualify for low income housing if they have a full time job. Not sure why that’s such a difficult concept to understand.

 

[John park hopper]

Your are told up front what the pay will be if it's not to your liking don't take the job, if you are unskilled gain some skills that make you more valuable to a company. Not sure why that's such a difficult concept to understand

 

[Ayla]

Anyone who works 40 hours a week should be paid enough so that person can afford the basic minimum to live. A decent, safe roof over their head, food and clothes for themselves and their children, transportation (whatever form that takes for their locale) and medical insurance.

I'm not talking about taking vacations to Disney, or driving a fancy car or having designer clothes, either, so don't even bother going there.

 

[castlecake2.0]

Would it matter?

You’re exhausting.

 

[sup]

Higher pay may not be the only answer. The cost of housing in the area is insane. It's got to be very difficult for a part time or even full time cast member to afford even an apartment anywhere near close to the parks. Some kind of cast member housing solution could help tremendously.

thats a great idea. The international people that are here for a year to work at Epcot could use this. Single cast members. Disney could buy an apartment building near Disney for its Cast members. Like a dormatory. Two to an apartment ect. great idea. Chapek never let it happen though. Not with his money!!!.

 

[sup]

wow, Chapek has not consumer care. Didn't know he treated employees like insignificant too. How do you rise moral? Major party blow out for workers and families. I work in a hospital with 10,000 plus, employees. Our exec. give a yearly party blow out with half the day off to attend in sections of hospital. exam,, HR, and other business offices get their party. My behavioral unit parties with the other units on our floor. People cover for each other so we can all go. Dancing, bbq,, competitive games and prizes. We won tug of war. Exec. give incentives and appreciation things through out the year too. It can be done,, if Disney wants too.

 

[flynnibus]

Yes they were.

“It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.” - FDR

Now if you’d like to argue with FDR let’s go to the hall of presidents thread

And what were still common in that era? boarding houses... no college... people used public transit vs everyone owning their own cars, and houses, etc. Minimum wage didn't mean cushy life for a family on one income... or affording things that at that time were luxuries.
Even when the minimum wage was new - it did not result in some utopia where everyone had 'decent living' on a single income. Anyone figure that out?

Talk to your parents or grandparents and ask where their paycheck went when they were a kid... to the parents running the household! People still worked multiple jobs to get by or try to make themselves a better place/future for their family.

When people didn't want that life... they pressed to climb above it with personal growth, or tried to get their kids educated so they wouldn't have to be stuck in the same grind. To give them better opportunities.

 

[flynnibus]

Anyone who works 40 hours a week should be paid enough so that person can afford the basic minimum to live. A decent, safe roof over their head, food and clothes for themselves and their children, transportation (whatever form that takes for their locale) and medical insurance.

What if that minimum meant taking the bus, and living with other renters in the same house? Or requiring multiple wage earners if you want to support multiple dependents. Is that still 'basic minimum to live'?

 

[eliza61nyc]

That’s great. I’m not against people moving up within a company. Nor do I expect anyone to be paid an executive level salary when first hiring on at WDW. But I expect them to be paid enough to not qualify for low income housing if they have a full time job. Not sure why that’s such a difficult concept to understand.

I don't think it's difficult concept to understand but I do think it is overly simplistic. Again some jobs by virtue of their design and skill set are not livable wage jobs regardless to how many hours you do it.
Its not dependent on how many hours they work.
Again, it's not about the hours worked only.
Now I will agree that in many cities affordable housing is a serious issue. I would love to see that problem tackled. Here in my next of the woods a decent apartment where your not dodging bullets is at least 1100/ month, if you're flipping burgers that's going to be a hard life, even at 15 dollars

 

[TrainsOfDisney]

I don't think it's difficult concept to understand but I do think it is overly simplistic. Again some jobs by virtue of their design and skill set are not livable wage jobs regardless to how many hours you do it.
Its not dependent on how many hours they work.
Again, it's not about the hours worked only.
Now I will agree that in many cities affordable housing is a serious issue. I would love to see that problem tackled. Here in my next of the woods a decent apartment where your not dodging bullets is at least 1100/ month, if you're flipping burgers that's going to be a hard life, even at 15 dollars

Well then I just don’t agree with how the system is set up. I think anyone working full time at Walt Disney World should be making enough to disqualify for low income housing.

As to rent- yeah that seems to be about the price you’re going to pay for a decent apartment anywhere.

 

[AEfx]

Some of the responses in this thread are so out of touch that I feel like I'm watching an episode of Leave It To Beaver.

What is going on right now in the labor market - and particularly at WDW - is the "end stage" of the "get a better job if you don't like it" mentality.

People kept saying it long enough, so folks have taken the advice.

 

[eliza61nyc]

Anyone who works 40 hours a week should be paid enough so that person can afford the basic minimum to live. A decent, safe roof over their head, food and clothes for themselves and their children, transportation (whatever form that takes for their locale) and medical insurance.

I'm not talking about taking vacations to Disney, or driving a fancy car or having designer clothes, either, so don't even bother going there.

And where does the money come from?? I'm going to tell you a cautionary tale from Philadelphia. Here is philadelphia someone decided that every kid should be able to go to pre kindergarten for free so the city enacted a 1.2C per ounce tax on any drink with sugar in it on top of the state taxes. lol one of the reasons I'm never shocked at wdw drink prices is because soda/gatorade/juice drinks are ridiculously priced here.
anyhoo. here's what happened. no one who can avoid it, is going to pay 4.50 for a bottle of soda consistently. so two things are happening.

1) since stores know they cannot sell a 6 pack of gatarode for 12.00 bucks what they have been doing is simply spreading the cost across other things to cover the tax.
2) folks like me are simply shopping outside the city. if you have a car its an easy 2 minute drive to any surburb or you pick it up on hte way home. now grocery stores are losing more than soda revenue.

last year they found out that the people who are actually getting hit hard from the soda tax are poor people, the very people they were supposedly helping. now before you say just start drinking water, human beings being what they are do not give up their "sin" habits.

I haven't stopped drinking sugar drinks I simply refuse to buy them here in Philly.

so you simply say raise their wages, how do you cover that?? no one is going to pay 17 bucks for a big mac. so usually what happens is exactly what happened in California, they cut the peoples hours

 

[TrainsOfDisney]

And where does the money come from?? I'm going to tell you a cautionary tale from Philadelphia. Here is philadelphia someone decided that every kid should be able to go to pre kindergarten for free so the city enacted a 1.2C per ounce tax on any drink with sugar in it on top of the state taxes. lol one of the reasons I'm never shocked at wdw drink prices is because soda/gatorade/juice drinks are ridiculously priced here.
anyhoo. here's what happened. no one who can avoid it, is going to pay 4.50 for a bottle of soda consistently. so two things are happening.

1) since stores know they cannot sell a 6 pack of gatarode for 12.00 bucks what they have been doing is simply spreading the cost across other things to cover the tax.
2) folks like me are simply shopping outside the city. if you have a car its an easy 2 minute drive to any surburb or you pick it up on hte way home. now grocery stores are losing more than soda revenue.

last year they found out that the people who are actually getting hit hard from the soda tax are poor people, the very people they were supposedly helping. now before you say just start drinking water, human beings being what they are do not give up their "sin" habits.

I haven't stopped drinking sugar drinks I simply refuse to buy them here in Philly.

so you simply say raise their wages, how do you cover that?? no one is going to pay 17 bucks for a big mac. so usually what happens is exactly what happened in California, they cut the peoples hours

Since we are only talking about Disney here... they can raise the entrance fee as much as they want!

 

[eliza61nyc]

Some of the responses in this thread are so out of touch that I feel like I'm watching an episode of Leave It To Beaver.

What is going on right now in the labor market - and particularly at WDW - is the "end stage" of the "get a better job if you don't like it" mentality.

People kept saying it long enough, so folks have taken the advice.

actually that is a good thing. Low wage jobs were not meant to be life long careers. People are supposed to want to do better. I started off in Walmart. the idea was not to whine to walmart about needed a better salary for hanging up clothes, the goal was to get the skills to not be an unskilled worker.
I've always said the number one motivating thing for me to go back to college was not my parents, it was my christmas job as an elf at the 34sst Macys in Manhattan. I knew without a doubt that it was a crappy low paying job and no way could I live in NYC and stay there

My kids first gig was pumping gas, no I don't think pumping gas should pay 28 bucks a hour just because you think you should be able to live on that job

 

[eliza61nyc]

Since we are only talking about Disney here... they can raise the entrance fee as much as they want!

lol Oh sweet baby jesus, can you imagine the threads then.

 

[Mr. Moderate]

This is too complicated of an issue to just write a paragraph on a web form and leave it at that. True, some minimum wage jobs were never meant to be a lifelong career such as McDonald’s, Burger King, fast food, etc unless of course you planned on going up the ladder and possibly getting a job running a few franchises or going up the corporate level.

As for Walt Disney World cast members, I still feel they are vastly under paid for what the company charges per guest and what they expect their cast members to do. I just can’t believe that we’re supposed to close our eyes to this issue and not try to do anything reasonable here. Without those cast members the Disney theme parks don’t exist.

On Twitter yesterday I saw somebody advocating $28 an hour minimum wage and I don’t think they thought that through too well or understand the consequences involved in that. I’ve see some very good posts on both sides of the issue was brought up here. I just wish that we had some clear solutions that would work for everybody involved because if you go too crazy with the minimum wage, businesses will cut back even further, less jobs available, and the let’s do more with less approach will be in effect. To be honest I don’t see any easy solution to this at all.

 

[TrainsOfDisney]

What I hope will happen soon... and I think is beginning to happen is more people are able to work for themselves.

There are lots of SBA loans and grants for young entrepreneurs to start small businesses and populate old downtown shops.

The small local coffee shop is family owned, pays their employees very well and has virtually no turnover. Plenty of regulars customers like me will gladly pay a little more than Starbucks for good quality coffee.

That, plus more privately owned businesses like in-n-out that pay their employees higher than average and only promote from within. That’s the way to do it. Every manager at in-n-out makes 6 figures and started at the bottom and worked every position in the restaurant. That’s how people should be expected to get better pay, but staying with a good company and learning how the company works from the ground up.

But this has now gotten off topic of Disney. Sorry!