Disney workers embroiled in a bitter dispute with management over healthcare rallied Wednesday outside the entertainment giant’s Burbank headquarters. Five employees launched a hunger strike.
“Shame on Disney!” declared Maria Elena Durazo, head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, who appeared at the rally. “They’re making big profits while trying to deny working people affordable healthcare.”
About 2,100 Disney workers represented by Local 11 of the Unite Here union have been without a contract for two years. The union is seeking to continue a healthcare plan that gives workers medical care at practically no cost to them.
Disney wants the workers to enlist in its Signature plan, which would require an employee contribution.
Disney says the contribution would be about $250 a month for a full family. The union says the figure would be $500, a burden for workers typically earning about $13 an hour.
Disney says that 30 out of 31 unions at the Disneyland Resort participate in the Signature plan and that only Local 11 has rejected it.
The activist union has been seeking to tarnish Disney’s family-friendly reputation with public protests and a highly visible hunger strike on the streets outside the resort in Anaheim. The hunger strike ended Tuesday, but on Wednesday five employees camped on the street outside the corporate headquarters in Burbank and began a new symbolic hunger strike, this time targeting corporate officers. Fasters will sleep in tents set up outside the Disney gates.
“Disney is not being true to the vision of Walt Disney,” said one of the hunger strikers, Christina Sanchez, a pastry chef at Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa.
Lisa Haines, a Disney spokeswoman, said that the company’s offer was fair and that the union was being unreasonable. Healthcare at no cost to employees is no longer economically viable, she said. She called on Local 11 to follow through on Disney’s plan for federal mediation of the dispute.
“We feel it would be helpful if the union spent more time negotiating and less time protesting,” Haines said. “We feel that there is a better path toward resolution.”
— Patrick J. McDonnell