Unionizing Disney
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Working as a Disney character sounds awful, especially at Disney World, where the costume + the humidity = hell. Those workers unionized last year. So I am glad to see this promising union vote begin at Disneyland.
Disneyland employees who perform as many of the theme park’s beloved characters have filed to have a vote on whether to join the Actors’ Equity Association, which represents live performers all over the country, from actors on Broadway to strippers in Los Angeles.
The group had announced a union organizing effort in February, but very often such campaigns fall short of filing to hold a vote. But the union announced Wednesday that it has filed cards signed by more than two-thirds of the 1,700 employees, seeking to have the National Labor Relations Board conduct an election.
“The cast members who bring the characters and parades to life have been non-union since Disneyland Resort opened in the 1950s and have watched other workers in the park unionize all around them,” said Equity President Kate Shindle, using the “cast members” terms used at Disney to refer to its employees.
Union organizing efforts have picked up in the last year, especially in the wake of a number of high-profile contract wins by unions that provided union members with large pay raises. Included in those wins were contracts covering 32,000 hourly workers at Disney World in Orlando, Florida, which gave them raises equal to $3 an hour by the end of last year and raises of about 37% over their previous hourly rate by 2026.
There are more than 21,000 Disneyland “cast member” employees, who are represented by more than a dozen unions. Those unionized jobs include everything from retail and food service workers to security guards, hair and make-up artists and pyrotechnic workers. But it doesn’t include the performers who dress up as characters such as Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck or Goofy and interact with visitors. Workers performing in the same roles are unionized at some other Disney theme parks, such as Disney World.
Disney should be wall-to-wall union, if no other reason that it seems like an awful place to work, with a ton of emotional labor on top of all the other stuff.