Disney Heiress Slams The Walt Disney Company After Furloughing 100,000 Employees
Disney Heiress Abigail Disney, who is the granddaughter of Walt Disney Company’s co-founder Roy Disney, encouraged the company to do better after they furloughed 100,000 employees.
A report in the Financial Times detailed that Disney was furloughing more than 100,000 employees in order to save up to an estimated $500 million a month. Not only were they furloughing their employees, but the report also indicates that the company was protecting incentive schemes for executive bonuses.
The Financial Times’ Anna Nicolaou and Alex Barker report, “Disney protected incentive schemes, which account for most of the executives’ remuneration. Mr Iger earned $65.6m in 2018 and $47m last year. The latest package is more than 900 times that of the median Disney worker’s earnings, which stands at about $52,000.”
Disney’s Executive Chairman Bob Iger and newly appointed CEO Bob Chapek did give up the remainder of their base salaries for the year. Iger’s yearly salary is reported to be $3 million while Chapek’s is $2.5 million.
In response to the article Abigail Disney penned an extensive thread on Twitter, where she specifically took issue with executive bonuses that total $1.5 billion.
She notes that could “pay for three months salary to front line workers.”
OK, I’ve been holding my tongue on the theory that a pandemic is no time to be calling people out on anything other than failing us in a public health sense. I thought it might be a moment for peace and reconciliation. But I feel a thread coming on….1/ https://t.co/G1mUq7RmAV
— Abigail Disney (@abigaildisney) April 21, 2020
WHAT THE ACTUAL F***????? Look, dividends aren’t ALL bad, given the number of fixed income folks who rely on them. But still 80% of shares are owned by the wealthiest 10%. So that excuse only goes so far. But the REAL outrage is, of course, those bonuses…2/
— Abigail Disney (@abigaildisney) April 21, 2020
She specifically notes the bonuses are “going to people who have already been collecting egregious bonuses for years.”
All 1.5 billion of them. 1.5 BILLION. That’d pay for three months salary to front line workers. And its going to people who have already been collecting egregious bonuses for years. Here is what the @ft piece has to say about it: 3/
— Abigail Disney (@abigaildisney) April 21, 2020
“Disney protected incentive schemes, which account for most of the executives’ remuneration. Mr Iger earned $65.6m in 2018 and $47m last year, The latest package is more than 900 times that of the median Disney worker’s earnings, which stands at about $52,000.” 4/
— Abigail Disney (@abigaildisney) April 21, 2020
And continuing: “Mr Chapek could potentially earn an annual bonus “of not less than 300 per cent” of salary, in addition to a long-term incentive award of “not less than $15m” This is why I was quiet in March when executives at the company made a big pr push to 5/
— Abigail Disney (@abigaildisney) April 21, 2020
Call attention to the fact that they were giving up a portion of their salaries for the year. I told people to wait until we heard about the rest of the compensation package, since salary is a drop in the bucket to these guys. The real payday is in the rest of the package 6/
— Abigail Disney (@abigaildisney) April 21, 2020
By design because it is taxed differently. Shareholders have twice voted to rebuff the outrageous pay, so it’s not just that common decency is being flouted here. Its the will of their allegedly all-important “owners.” Iger’s comp will still be 900 times median wage. 7/
— Abigail Disney (@abigaildisney) April 21, 2020
Not only does the Disney heiress slam Disney executives like Bob Iger and Bob Chapek for their bonuses, but she also criticizes them for the way they have treated their workers.
But it gets worse. The front line workers at the parks had to fight for years to get their pay bumped up to $15/hr and the pr folks touted that as incredible magnanimity on management’s park, but if you know the back story, which I do, you would be horrified to know just 8/
— Abigail Disney (@abigaildisney) April 21, 2020
how hard they made it for the people asking for that $15. The way they floated around congratulating themselves it was damn hard to take. If a frontline worker gets 40 hours a week(and that’s a big if, since just like everyone else, Disney shaves away hours to keep folks from 9/
— Abigail Disney (@abigaildisney) April 21, 2020
being full time) 52 weeks a year (again a big if, esp since they don’t have paid sick days unless they get 40 hours, which, see above parenthetical statement) they pull down 31,200 per year. Sounds nice till you consider gas prices and the housing market in Orange County 10/
— Abigail Disney (@abigaildisney) April 21, 2020
Abigail Disney then points out the massive pay discrepancy between Disney’s executive officers, their frontline workers, and the median salary for a Disney employee.
(It’s weird to note, btw, that both Disney’s, Land and World, are in Orange Counties, but anyway) So Iger’s compensation for THIS YEAR will amount to 1,500x their pay. Chapek’s, if he gets the full amount, is 300% of his 3 million base pay, or $9MM. 288x the front liners’ 11/
— Abigail Disney (@abigaildisney) April 21, 2020
And 173x his median workers pay, plus another 15MM over the long term. What kind of person is comfortable with this??? If you have a shred of empathy in your body, if you care even a little about your employees, if you believe a word of your nice rhetoric about how, 12/
— Abigail Disney (@abigaildisney) April 21, 2020
She then calls on Disney to do better saying that while the challenge to the company will be rough it does not “constitute permission to continue pillaging and rampaging by managament.”
Acc to Mr Chapek, “Our ability to do good in the world starts with our cast members . . . who create magic every day. Our commitment to them will always be our top priority.” If even a whiff of this is sincere, none of this compensation bullshit is possible. 13/
— Abigail Disney (@abigaildisney) April 21, 2020
THIS COMPANY MUST DO BETTER. Disney faces a rough couple of years, to be sure. The challenges are existential, even. But that does not constitute permission to continue pillaging and rampaging by management. In fact, if a bonus reflects performance, we might want to claw 14/
— Abigail Disney (@abigaildisney) April 21, 2020
She goes on to criticize Disney’s management for $11.5 billion worth of stock buy backs between March 31, 2018 and June 30, 2019.
Back some of those millions given how they’ve managed cash. Between March 31, 2018 and June 30 of 2019 the company made $11.5 billion of stock buybacks. ELEVEN. POINT. FIVE. BILLION. Now no one could have foreseen this crisis. That is an absolutely fair thing to say. 15/
— Abigail Disney (@abigaildisney) April 21, 2020
But ANYONE, could have anticipated SOME crisis. That’s one of the things responsible managers do. And good, solid, competent management is why they get the “big bucks” we are told. But those buybacks are beginning to look pretty self indulgent right now 16/
— Abigail Disney (@abigaildisney) April 21, 2020
And whom do buybacks enrich? Well, shareholders, and again, that’s great for people on fixed incomes, sure, but who gains the most? Well if you are being compensated in shares and you drive the price up in buybacks that works out really nicely for you, doesn’t it? 17/
— Abigail Disney (@abigaildisney) April 21, 2020
She then points to Disney’s mismanagement of handling “messes of their own making.”
And therein lies another piece of terrible management, worse even the buy backs and the compensation. They have consistently tried to PR their way through a series of messes of their own making, and that will only last for so long. 18/
— Abigail Disney (@abigaildisney) April 21, 2020
Abigail Disney then calls on Disney executives to “give up SOME of your already ample compensation.”
I don’t have a role at the company, which is fine with me. I’m just a citizen who cares and I think that makes me free to say what I believe. But I am an heir. And I do carry this name with me everywhere. And I have a conscience which makes it very difficult for me to 22/
— Abigail Disney (@abigaildisney) April 21, 2020
She notes that the current crisis has created “an opportunity for change” and encourages Disney executives to “pay the people who make the magic happen with respect and dignity.”
sit by when I see abuses taking place with that name attached to them. This isn’t all that hard. This isn’t all that complicated. Just give up SOME of your already ample compensation, especially this year. Give up, god forbid two or three basis points on the annual return 23/
— Abigail Disney (@abigaildisney) April 21, 2020
is always an opportunity for change. Reassess this mess you’ve made of the good will you got handed on which you depend more than you like to admit. And pay the people who make the magic happen with respect and dignity they have more than earned from you. BE DECENT. END
— Abigail Disney (@abigaildisney) April 21, 2020
Abigail Disney previously criticized Bob Iger for taking home $66 million in 2019. She stated, “I like Bob Iger. Let me be very clear: I think he’s a good man. But I think he’s allowing himself to go down a road that is the road everyone is going down.”
She added, “When he got his bonus last year, I did the math, and I figured out that he could have given personally, out of pocket, a 15% raise to everyone who worked at Disneyland, and still walked away with $10 million.”
She concluded, “So there’s a point at which there’s just too much going around the top of the system into this class of people who–I’m sorry this is radical–have too much money. There is such a thing.”
A Disney spokesperson responded via a statement to Fast Company at the time, “Disney has made historic investments to expand the earning potential and upward mobility of our workers, implementing a starting hourly wage of $15 at Disneyland that’s double the federal minimum wage, and committing up to $150 million for a groundbreaking education initiative that gives our hourly employees the opportunity to obtain a college or vocational degree completely free of charge.”
What do you make of Abigail Disney’s recent comments regarding The Walt Disney Company’s business practices amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic?
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