By Audrey Chambers, Contributing Writer
On Wednesday Sep. 30th, The Majestic Theatre held a screening of the American Dream and Other Fairytales. The film was directed and produced by Abigail Disney, the granddaughter of Roy O. Disney, who co-founded The Walt Disney Company with his brother, Walt. Both her father and grandfather had large roles as executives at the company.
Her work as a philanthropist advocating for low-income families first began in 1984, and was highlighted in the film when a Disneyland employee reached out to her in 2018. Ralph, a Disneyland employee of over 10 years, reached out to Abigail over Facebook Messenger. He explained the severity of his, and many other Disneyland employee’s financial situations. Ralph explains that the “wages do not allow for the picture of having a family he imagined for himself.”
Upon learning the severity of the situations of many cast members, Abigail immediately knew there was something more that could be done. Looking at the history of the company wages, she found that a cast member in the 40s, 50s, and 60s could afford to have a house, car, and family. Now, there are “cast members who have to make decisions between medication and food,” Abigail noted. So what changed? Why didn’t CEO’s in that period give themselves the lifestyle CEO’s have now? “They had ethics.”
When addressing a group of his employees Roy Disney said, “it takes people to run a business and you people are the heart and soul of the business.” Abigail makes a point to emphasize that the company her family built is one she no longer recognizes. “What happened to the way my grandfather did business?” Abigail asked. A custodian would have to work for 2,000 years to make the amount of money Bob Iger made in a single year.
Abigail asked Ralph, “If you could tell Disney anything, what would you like to tell them?” Ralph replied, “I would tell them that we would like to be able to have a home.” Unfortunately we learn at the end of the documentary that Ralph was forced to quit his job at Disneyland due to the health effects he has developed as a result of the increasingly physically demanding work. Ralph said “our workload has increased and our wages have stayed the same.”
Disney argues that the social contract between all social classes to create a decent quality of life for everyone is now gone. The documentary dives into the history of how we arrived at this conclusion. The difference between the CEO and worker compensation is so drastic that “⅔ of workers don’t have enough money to buy food.” The documentary also explains how the history of the labor movement in America has helped to pave the way for the current 27 different union affiliates at Disneyland that fight for better wages.
Abigail commented that her “Dad went to battle over the direction of the company.” It is safe to say she is proudly following in her father’s footsteps through her work on the film as well as direct corporate policy pressure and her public alignment with the labor unions. “There is a deeply painful irony,” she noted “that someone working at the happiest place on earth is forced to sleep in their car.”
