I haven’t seen anyone suggest $100k per year as a starting salary for WDW CM’s. Half of that, which is $50k = $24 per hour for a 40 hour work week.
Yes. That was 5 years ago. Times change.
If that’s what you’re really suggesting, i.e. paying ALL full time cast members 50k, then I will tell you that thru attrition and union concessions, full time positions will be reduced to an ABSOLUTE bare minimum.
My last retail management position was with the largest “dollar” chain in the US. They started EVERY associate at the state’s minimum wage. Even assistant managers are hourly part time to save on medical benefits and to save payroll.
Regardless of whether you think it’s right, earned, moral or fair, it’s not going to happen. I worked my entire adult life (and then some) in retail and retail management and this industry will just find other means to circumvent hiring full time employees.
Since you got me on my soap box, my grandfather came to the US from Eastern Europe at the beginning of the 20th century as a tailor. He and my grandmother each worked 3 menial jobs, but put food on the table and raised 4 children in the midst of the depression and NEVER accepted a handout (a fact they always prided themselves on).
My grandfather, the tailor, was very instrumental in forming trade unions to put a stop to the sweat shops that proliferated that industry during that time period. As a result, my dad and my uncle were staunch “union men” in their blue collar AT&T jobs. As I got older, I had MANY heated discussions with them about labor unions. Every time a contract came up, the unions wanted more perks in addition to a raise. Again, businesses are in business to make money. What happened? All those lifelong blue collar jobs went to Mexico then Japan then China. All the tech jobs started getting outsourced to other countries as well.
I ABSOLUTELY believe that labor unions were an essential part of what made this country so great during the twentieth century. Now, I’m not on that same bandwagon. Because technology allows news to travel in seconds, information about indiscretions move too fast and public opinion can ruin a corporation faster that a labor walkout.
I saw what my dad experienced before he retired and he always said that the way the rank and file were treated by their unions left such a bitter taste in his mouth, he used to say that the only thing unions did well was to protect bad employees from getting fired.
It definitely made me think…
