they have proven loyalty, honesty and dependability. Those qualities in themselves, irrespective of additional duties, makes them owed pay raises.
In some jobs, in some companies, that's true, although a lot of cases I can think of, that "dependability" means the employee
did more than the job called for, by sticking their neck out and challenging the system or otherwise finding a way to make the company more efficient. In a large company, those people move up into higher paying positions; in a smaller company, even though they're making the company more money, there isn't anywhere to move them, so they get a raise.
Unless the employees are making more money
for the company, no company can afford to just keep giving long-term employees automatic raises for loyalty very long. That money has to come from somewhere. Often people are getting raises based on inflation (and a lot of times lose ground in spending power even so), and sometimes unions can force pay raises (but the company often has to adjust -- before the animator's strike at Disney, Disney employed around 1200; after it was unionized, only 694), and sometimes companies give out raises just because business is booming and they're happy to share, but for the most part, people get pay raises because they're somehow earning the company more money.
At least in terms of the front-line people, the CMs most of us are most likely to be interacting with, Disney, like many amusement parks, relies on college kids and people who are semi-retired. I don't think Disney takes in nearly so high a percentage of high school kids as amusement parks do, partly because they do hold their employees to a higher standard that many local amusement parks, but both amusement parks and theme parks employ a lot of people who don't need prior job experience or any particular training going in. And people like that don't get paid well unless they go beyond the basic job requirements, by suggesting ways Disney can improve things or by getting training on the job to do something more specialized than running the cash register or whatever.
It'd be nice if the rise in
ticket prices was passed on to the employees, and I hope Disney does raise wages to keep up with inflation, but first off Disney can't afford to regularly kick up everyone's pay "just because" and secondly, Disney owes their stockholders money, too. I have a lot of issues with how stocks are used right now, but companies sell stock in the first place to get money for some project or expansion or whatever, and the stockholder does deserve to be paid for making that "loan."
Disney has a responsibility to both employees and stockholders to charge "what the market will bear." Walt was a generous employer when he had money, but he also expected his employees to "suck it up" and tolerate pay cuts
despite their productivity when times were tough. He felt it cuts both ways -- he's generous, so the employees should be generous to him -- and he felt the animator's strike was a terrible betrayal. He'd been willing to "carry" people who didn't work as hard as others, rather than lay people off; he said the animator's strike forced him to get rid of "the world-owes-me-a-living" guys.
So even in Walt's own lifetime, there was a shift from the smaller business practice of generosity in good times and cut backs while trying not to lay people off in bad, to the policy of "work hard and we'll reward you, but if you can be replaced by someone who makes us more money, likely you will be."
Disney's park prices are higher, but they aren't way out there compared to other theme parks, and Disney offers four parks instead of two, and an immersive experience like no other. I'm not happy about the price hike, but I'm also not convinced it's unreasonable.
all will...
