'Pay a living wage': Bernie Sanders accuses Disney of dodging fair pay

Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
Thu 23 Aug 2018 20.11 EDT

Excerpts:

The Walt Disney Company came under heavy fire on Thursday for a decision to walk away from hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies and tax breaks for its southern California theme parks, a move critics are characterizing as an extraordinary last-ditch effort to avoid paying a living wage to thousands of workers.

Leading the charge, Senator Bernie Sanders accused the company of acting out of fear that voters in Anaheim, Disney’s host city, will pass a living wage ordinance in November. The ordinance, applicable to any large company receiving municipal tax breaks, would require Disneyland and the neighboring Disney California Adventure to pay all 30,000 employees at least $15 an hour, rising to $18 an hour by 2022 and keeping pace with inflation thereafter.

“Disney is so nervous that the living wage ballot initiative in Anaheim is going to pass,” he charged, “it would rather end some of the corporate welfare it receives from local taxpayers than pay all 30,000 of its workers decent wages.”

Christopher Duarte, the local president of the Workers United union that represents the resort’s 7,000 food service workers, the largest single group of employees, told the Guardian it wasn’t clear to him what exactly Disney was relinquishing or why. “Can they even exit the agreement that they have with the city?” he asked. “We don’t know what the point of this is. But it does feel like a dodge for the workers.”

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/aug/23/pay-a-living-wage-bernie-sanders-accuses-disney-of-dodging-fair-pay