Should cast members be paid more?

[Carly_Roach]

Seriously??? I make over 60K at my entry level job with just a BS degree, so you think a CEO should only be able to make a little over twice what I do? If the U.S. did that I would seriously start looking to see about moving to another country without such a law. Other countries would then get a HUGE influx of the best workers and companies in the U.S. would leave even faster then they are now so that they are where the best workers are.

And they're welcome to do that. I'm sure NAFTA would then be repealed and the tariffs would come back on imports and that would help make up for whatever lost tax revenue the US experienced.

If you are the lowest paid worker at $60K (and you probably aren't), then your CEO would be entitled to $600K per year. So in your example, if the lowest paid workers are living in poverty and needing Government assistance just so they could survive (such as your average Wal-mart employee), then yes, your CEO should only be making a little over twice what you do. He's shifting the burden of taking care of his workers over to the rest of us so he can make an exhorbitant profit.

I have a hard time understanding how people can be screaming over the perceived "cost" of socialized healthcare but they aren't reacting at all over how the corporations are raping us as a country each and every week. I guess as long as one is making headlines and reaping advertising profits for that network while the other is buried like a dirty little secret this is what will happen.

 

[Dis4]

So maybe I'm in the minority here but Disney is well within their rights to pay these employees whatever they want (minimum wage or higher of course). Frankly I've always thought of CM jobs and park jobs as a good place for college students and senior citizens to earn some extra income. I'm not quite sure I follow the logic of a 40 year old man who is the sole provider for his family of 5 checking tickets at the gate and then complaining he's not making enough. That is not a highly skilled job so the pay is going to be low, that's a fact.

On top of that, they are working in the happiest place on earth and have mostly great weather year round. I'm not sure I feel a lot of sympathy here.

 

[Dis4]

If you are the lowest paid worker at $60K (and you probably aren't), then your CEO would be entitled to $600K per year.

What's your logic behind that?

 

[DisneyBamaFan]

...I have a hard time understanding how people can be screaming over the perceived "cost" of socialized healthcare but they aren't reacting at all over how the corporations are raping us as a country each and every week. I guess as long as one is making headlines and reaping advertising profits for that network while the other is buried like a dirty little secret this is what will happen.

I am far from a corporate apologist, but if you think that corporations are "raping" Americans, your perspective is skewed. Most upper middle class employees in America work for corporations. How is that "rape"?

 

[Dis4]

Not as rude as pulling one sentence out of several posts and asking me where my logic is, newbee.

I've read all your posts and your logic is that you want the people on the bottom of the corporate chain to be treated better. You obviously want to close the gap between the rich and the poor. Limiting CEO pay is not the way to do that. That will kill this country by having talent shipped overseas because I can promise you that the executives at Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, Google aren't going to let you or anyone else tell them how much to make.

Let's say that the lowest employee at Facebook makes 30k (technical support guy who answers emails for people who can't login to the site). You think that the CEO and Founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, should have his pay limited to 300K? You realize he's the man who created the whole thing and invested his time and money to build a business.

On top of this, most big time executives are making their money from stock options, not salary. You can't limit stock options. A CEO can just cut his salary to 100k, reduce everyone else's wages to 10k, and award himself more stock options. See how that works?

 

[Carly_Roach]

I've read all your posts and your logic is that you want the people on the bottom of the corporate chain to be treated better. You obviously want to close the gap between the rich and the poor. Limiting CEO pay is not the way to do that. That will kill this country by having talent shipped overseas because I can promise you that the executives at Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, Google aren't going to let you or anyone else tell them how much to make.

Let's say that the lowest employee at Facebook makes 30k (technical support guy who answers emails for people who can't login to the site). You think that the CEO and Founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, should have his pay limited to 300K? You realize he's the man who created the whole thing and invested his time and money to build a business.

On top of this, most big time executives are making their money from stock options, not salary. You can't limit stock options. A CEO can just cut his salary to 100k, reduce everyone else's wages to 10k, and award himself more stock options. See how that works?

Yep.

Personally I advocate the idea of capping upper management wages to no more than 10X the amount of the lowest wage offered at the company. If a countrywide law states that CEO's and their entourages could only top out at $150K per year including perks and stock options, and it applied to any business no matter what that business does, I believe we'd start to see some changes in how the bottom level is paid and treated.

I excel at comprehensive reading; something many people seem to be lacking as they skim over the headlines and base their opinions on whatever the networks want them to think.

And, as I also said in another post, you're entitled to your opinion. Everybody's got one. The one I speak most about are those I admire and my own. As Georg Christoph Lichtenberg said:

Don't judge a man by his opinions, but what his opinions have made of him.

 

[Took]

Disney CMs are not required to join the union. All CMs work under the union agreement. If there is a problem and a CM is not a member of the union, the union will not represent them in any way.

Really? Not the way the union works where I am in IL. We have to represent every employee covered by the contract whether they join the union or not.

 

[lovetoscrap]

Then perhaps if they want to make $300K a year, their lowest level employees should be making at least $30K a year. Ditto for $500K, $750K and on up.
.

Wouldn't this sort of a model then just cause the price of goods and services to go up, thus raising the cost of living and making that $30K at or below the poverty level?

And if the top salary anyone can make has a strict cap then the sales of high end/ luxury items (like vacations) would drop drastically causing a huge surge in unemployment among workers in those industries. Cars, boats, construction, clothing, travel, landscaping, industries that produce high end items and so on and so on.

 

[Took]

And they're welcome to do that. I'm sure NAFTA would then be repealed and the tariffs would come back on imports and that would help make up for whatever lost tax revenue the US experienced.

If you are the lowest paid worker at $60K (and you probably aren't), then your CEO would be entitled to $600K per year. So in your example, if the lowest paid workers are living in poverty and needing Government assistance just so they could survive (such as your average Wal-mart employee), then yes, your CEO should only be making a little over twice what you do. He's shifting the burden of taking care of his workers over to the rest of us so he can make an exhorbitant profit.

I have a hard time understanding how people can be screaming over the perceived "cost" of socialized healthcare but they aren't reacting at all over how the corporations are raping us as a country each and every week. I guess as long as one is making headlines and reaping advertising profits for that network while the other is buried like a dirty little secret this is what will happen.

If our corporate executives really think they want to live elsewhere to make more money, I say more power to them. Hope the screen don't hit you.

I'm in support of the idea expressed in many posts of narrowing the unbelievable gap that has arisen in recent years between upper management and "everyone else" at most corporations.

 

[tvguy]

Seriously??? I make over 60K at my entry level job with just a BS degree, so you think a CEO should only be able to make a little over twice what I do? If the U.S. did that I would seriously start looking to see about moving to another country without such a law. Other countries would then get a HUGE influx of the best workers and companies in the U.S. would leave even faster then they are now so that they are where the best workers are.

Wow. Count your lucky stars. DW and I have our degrees and 30 years in our jobs and don't make $60k, that is amazing for an entry level job.

 

[Dis4]

If our corporate executives really think they want to live elsewhere to make more money, I say more power to them. Hope the screen don't hit you.

They don't have to live elsewhere. They can live right here and incorporate their company in another country. The company pays taxes to the country, the owner pays his income taxes to the USA.

 

[Carly_Roach]

Wouldn't this sort of a model then just cause the price of goods and services to go up, thus raising the cost of living and making that $30K at or below the poverty level?

And if the top salary anyone can make has a strict cap then the sales of high end/ luxury items (like vacations) would drop drastically causing a huge surge in unemployment among workers in those industries. Cars, boats, construction, clothing, travel, landscaping, industries that produce high end items and so on and so on.

Not necessarily. Henry Ford discovered that he could take a "high end" luxury - an electric automobile in the times of horse-drawn vehicles - and turn it into an everyday item and make millions. He also discovered that he sold more cars if he paid his employees enough to buy them. The same thing happened with washing machines, dishwashers, computers, you name it.

If companies made things that were affordable to the general public, they'd sell more of them. Unfortunately, what happened was companies started saturating the middle-class American market with deep-discounted items which, after all the fallout, drove the standard of living in this country DOWN and sent all of our manufacturing out of the country to third-world slave labor.

We also, as a corporate culture, foolishly tried to cater to the upper class thinking that they would sustain our living and said the hell with the lower classes not realizing that there are far more of them than the upper classes. Once you've sold that million dollar diamond to your 10 customers and made your 10 million, then what do you do? There aren't any more customers out there.

So price caps on executive pay unless and until they start paying a better salary to their workers may just bring this country back. It'll help bring back the middle class, that's for sure.

 

[brerrabbit]

I think a large part of the problem is perception and location. Disney employs a lot of CM's in one location WDW. McDonalds, Burger King, etc employs a lot of people all over the country and the world for that matter. Don't think the latter pays any better than Disney because they don't. Wages may vary from state to state but rest assured they are low as well. The real issue is one that was brought up very early in this thread, the jobs are not skilled positions and due to the theroy of supply and demand wages will not increase as long as there are enough people to fill those jobs. What I would love to see is a comparison of Disney wages vs all the other tourist related businesses in the Orlando area. What does Universal pay? hotels, motels, resturants, fast food places, etc. I would guess based on the number of people working at Disney that the pay is comparable if not even slightly less.

Disney Employee's Union has a large membership and therefore a large platform from which to speak but how many other employee groups in Orlando are complaining about their pay?

The idea that Disney, or for that matter any company operating in the US has an obligation to pay a "living wage" to employees is a flawed assumption. As long as people line up to take the jobs offered at the pay offered then that is the competative wage. Obviously there is a large concentration of people who have moved to the area over the years that it has caused an oversupply of workers and therefore limited opportunities and lessened what employers need to pay.

As so many complain about how much money the Mouse makes keep in mind that if you invest in the market in the form of mutual funds there is a strong possibility you own a piece of Disney. For that matter I own Disney stock directly and in that regard I certainly want to see them be as profitable as possible.

 

[Carly_Roach]

The idea that Disney, or for that matter any company operating in the US has an obligation to pay a "living wage" to employees is a flawed assumption. As long as people line up to take the jobs offered at the pay offered then that is the competative wage.

Which makes me think of those landowners in the 30's paying lower and lower hourly wages because the country was starving. I'm sure they used this line of reasoning as well when talking about how they had just as many men willing to work for .15 cents an hour as they did for .25 cents an hour.

I can tell you for sure that this line of reasoning is why unions came into being and I bet it was this kind of thinking that caused all the social programs some people whine about to be put into place. So congratulations people. We've come full circle and are about to begin again. All because we cannot learn from the past and control our own greed.

Obviously there is a large concentration of people who have moved to the area over the years that it has caused an oversupply of workers and therefore limited opportunities and lessened what employers need to pay.

I woudn't jump to that assumption without seeing actual data. Florida was hit by the Recession just as hard as Michigan was and it wasn't because everyone moved here creating a glut. It was because businesses failed and people were out of work. They are willing to take anything to keep a roof over their heads and put food on the table.

As I said in my first post - the similarities between what's happening now and what is described in The Grapes of Wrath are striking.

 

[Dis4]

Being a CM is not a high skill job, anyone can do it. Therefore it is not a high paying job. End. Over. Done.

 

[SandrA9810]

I love how so many people go on and on about "unskilled workers"... do you actually realize you're putting your life in the hands of the CM that's pushing that green button?? Not all rides are complicated or dangerous, but people do stupid stuff all the time and they're the ones that have to keep every one else safe.

You know that lovely Steamboat in Liberty Square? If that boiler ever overheats, you're talking mass destruction on that side of the park. Those classic steam trains that are grandfathered into old liability clauses... yeah, they could blow up half the park. And no, they don't get paid any better to make sure that the boilers don't blow up.

Universal does boast about it's higher wages for starting positions. But it's a give and take in the theme park industry. And Disney is still the largest employer in the central Florida region, something that is bragged about constantly. So they do rule the market in the area.

It's a kind of funny irony.
I tell some one I worked two years for Disney World
Central FL resident: "ohh yeah, I did my time there too"
Outside of FL resident: "ohh wow, that must've been the greatest job in the world"

Any one in that area could care less about some one being a CM. Get outside of it, and all of sudden you were in some miracle dream job.

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

Not necessarily. Henry Ford discovered that he could take a "high end" luxury - an electric automobile in the times of horse-drawn vehicles - and turn it into an everyday item and make millions. He also discovered that he sold more cars if he paid his employees enough to buy them. The same thing happened with washing machines, dishwashers, computers, you name it.

If companies made things that were affordable to the general public, they'd sell more of them. Unfortunately, what happened was companies started saturating the middle-class American market with deep-discounted items which, after all the fallout, drove the standard of living in this country DOWN and sent all of our manufacturing out of the country to third-world slave labor.

We also, as a corporate culture, foolishly tried to cater to the upper class thinking that they would sustain our living and said the hell with the lower classes not realizing that there are far more of them than the upper classes. Once you've sold that million dollar diamond to your 10 customers and made your 10 million, then what do you do? There aren't any more customers out there.

So price caps on executive pay unless and until they start paying a better salary to their workers may just bring this country back. It'll help bring back the middle class, that's for sure.

It isn't catering to anyone though.

With wage minimums, you will always have an upper, middle, and lower class.
Someone will always be at the bottom. So while it is noble to wish the minimum wage employees to be paid a minimum wage, it will just drive up the price of goods now that more people can afford the basics and former-luxury items.

Supply and Demand is a beast.

 

[DisneyBamaFan]

...So congratulations people. We've come full circle and are about to begin again. All because we cannot learn from the past and control our own greed...

So, low wages are the root of all evil? Corporate greed? Greedy farmers?

Not sure who you want me to throw stones at?

 

[WDSearcher]

Being a CM is not a high skill job, anyone can do it. Therefore it is not a high paying job. End. Over. Done.

WRONG. Not all CMs are unskilled workers. Disney employs many many skill levels from entry-level foods workers to Imagineers with very specialized mechanical and creative skillsets. Please don't lump all CMs into one big pool and assume that "anyone can do it."

Thanks

 

[Carly_Roach]

So, low wages are the root of all evil? Corporate greed? Greedy farmers?

Not sure who you want me to throw stones at?

I have never, and will never, advocate anyone to throw stones at anyone. That is a base way to live and I'm glad I don't participate in that behavior. I just wish people would think before tossing off their "I don't care, not my problem, tough luck" sound byte answers, that's all.

I would expect someone who's been poor all their lives to not be able to comprehend the difficulties that comes from owning and running vast amounts of wealth and enterprises and I would forgive those lower income people for their ignorance of the problems that wealth can entail. However, I have higher expectations from the wealthy, "educated" middle-upper classes to somehow wrap their brains and knowledge around what a poor person has to deal with and show some compassion.

When the wealthy exhibit the same ignorant, selfish behaviors as the lower income class does, it makes me shake my head.