Disney paying a “living wage”. Sigh…

[Pickles516]

Thank you for your response.

Maybe it was my thinking that a person working in a fast food restaurant and wanting to live in Windermere Fl, in my mind it is an example that I never put into writing.

The economic landscape is different today than it was back then. As cost have gone up through history so have wages. For the most part wages usually never keep up with certain lifestyles henceforth my ideology of people either work more hours or find a different job that pays more. People had the same struggles back then as they do now. When I worked at Disney people complained about not making enough money, who ever really makes enough money of the ordinary working class.

I am not sure how old you are and I am not asking however I had my first real job back in the early 80s. Thing may have been different back then as was my thinking.
The statement I made about people being where they wanted to be in life is something I have lived by my self starting with that first real job. So if some people find that to be indifferent to them I may be wrong, and maybe I am but that was the way I was raised. I think it was also part of the way of life where I was raised.

When my wife and I left New Jersey back in the 90s I was making a substantial income. I decided I wanted to some day work for Disney, so thats what we did.
I went from making that substantial amount of money to making $6.10 an hour with a .25 cent raise after 90 days if my memory is correct.
My friends thought I was crazy for taking the pay cut I was taking and asked why don't you just do what you do in NJ in Fl. I said I wanted a change and lived by my people are where they are at in life ideal. The idea may be outdated but it is still true.

Nobody’s saying a fast food worker should be able to afford a mansion. I’m saying they should be able to afford an apartment, food, and transportation to and from work. Wages haven’t even attempted to keep up with the costs of living, even though minimum wage was explicitly designed to allow a full time worker to support a family. Now it can’t even support the individual.

Believing that people are where they want to be in life, and are simply impoverished by choice is just so far out of the realm of reality that I don’t even really know how to address it. If that’s what you believe then that’s what you believe, but I can’t really see a productive avenue for this conversation to take if we’re even pretending that’s a premise worth entertaining.

 

[Pickles516]

Wanting people not to be in poverty is a notion, not an argument. For it to be an argument, you have to present a different way of doing things that would potentially solve the problem.

Also, the definitions of "needlessly" and "poverty" need to be examined before I can accept your notion.

Good thing I don’t need or want you to accept anything.

 

[Jonfw2]

minimum wage was explicitly designed to allow a full time worker to support a family

I'm sorry but this is a complete falsehood. Not sure how it became a thing, but it's simply never been the truth.

Roosevelt set the first minimum wage at .25 per hour. That's the equivalent of about $5 today for inflation. Using a much more liberal definition of inflation, it's still around $9 an hour. Way lower than the current lowest wages in the country today.

 

[Jonfw2]

Good thing I don’t need or want you to accept anything.

So do you have any thoughts as to what we can do differently?

 

[Pickles516]

I'm sorry but this is a complete falsehood. Not sure how it became a thing, but it's simply never been the truth.

Roosevelt set the first minimum wage at .25 per hour. That's the equivalent of about $5 today for inflation. Using a much more liberal definition of inflation, it's still around $9 an hour. Way lower than the current lowest wages in the country today.

It was absolutely the intent, regardless of whether or no the implementation succeeded in that goal:
http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/odnirast.html

Let’s say you’re right though, just for kicks. Even then, inflation doesn’t tell the whole story. At that time a minimum wage worker could afford a Harvard education off of one year’s wages. They could buy a house outright after 5 years of minimum wage work. It’s a completely different ballgame.

 

[Pickles516]

So do you have any thoughts as to what we can do differently?

Aside from multi-national corporations that pull down more than the GDP of some countries annually paying their employees a living wage?

 

[Jonfw2]

It was absolutely the intent, regardless of whether or no the implementation succeeded in that goal:
http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/odnirast.html

Let’s say you’re right though, just for kicks. Even then, inflation doesn’t tell the whole story. At that time a minimum wage worker could afford a Harvard education off of one year’s wages. They could buy a house outright after 5 years of minimum wage work. It’s a completely different ballgame.

4 years of Harvard in 1938 was $1,680. At .25 an hour, a minimum wage employee would have had to work three straight years and buy literally nothing else to afford Harvard.

 

[71 Truck]

Nobody’s saying a fast food worker should be able to afford a mansion. I’m saying they should be able to afford an apartment, food, and transportation to and from work. Wages haven’t even attempted to keep up with the costs of living, even though minimum wage was explicitly designed to allow a full time worker to support a family. Now it can’t even support the individual.

Believing that people are where they want to be in life, and are simply impoverished by choice is just so far out of the realm of reality that I don’t even really know how to address it. If that’s what you believe then that’s what you believe, but I can’t really see a productive avenue for this conversation to take if we’re even pretending that’s a premise worth entertaining.

Well I think we can agree to dis agree.
Thank you for the conversation it has made me think about some of the thing you talked about, I may have just been raised in a different time and place.

 

[Jonfw2]

Aside from multi-national corporations that pull down more than the GDP of some countries annually paying their employees a living wage?

Just saying "multi-national corporations" isn't an argument, Pickles. You ignore the fact that these companies pay a significant amount of wages worldwide, they and their employees pay most of the taxes worldwide, and they provide critically important products we all use.

Also, you haven't defined "living wage".

Give me a specific example of a multi-national corporation that is behind where you'd like them to be.

 

[Pickles516]

4 years of Harvard in 1938 was $1,680. At .25 an hour, a minimum wage employee would have had to work three straight years and buy literally nothing else to afford Harvard.

They could attend Harvard, year for year, with one minimum wage job. That’s the point.

You seem obsessed with me putting forth an “argument”. Disney can afford to pay their cast members more, and should do so for both professional and ethical reasons. Full stop. That’s the argument.

Edit: I’ve also already defined what I personally mean by a living wage.

 

[Jonfw2]

They could attend Harvard, year for year, with one minimum wage job. That’s the point.

You seem obsessed with me putting forth an “argument”. Disney can afford to pay their cast members more, and should do so for both professional and ethical reasons. Full stop. That’s the argument.

Whether Disney can or should pay more and for what reasons is very subjective. The fact of the matter is they've just suffered the worst financial calamity in the history of their company. As evidenced by firing their brand new CEO, they clearly haven't found their way out of these problems yet. Disney's inflows during Covid dropped 125%. That is unprecedented in modern history for a blue chip company.

Meanwhile, during all of this, THEY RAISED WAGES!!! Non union employee minimum pay was raised to $15 an hour (actually $17 in the vast majority of cases) and cast members were thrilled.

Where you deduce that a company that raised wages during a spectacular crisis is violating their "ethical" obligation is baffling.

Also, your Harvard argument is just silly. If you make $500 a year and college is $480 you cannot afford it.

 

[ConnerK]

The middle class in the United States is eroding to the point of nonexistence. This isn't a Disney specific thing, but the fact that Disneyland workers were notoriously sleeping in their cars in the parking lot because they couldn't afford the rent to be able to live anywhere remotely close to where they work should be a problem for anyone with the capacity to read the sentence.

 

[Jonfw2]

The middle class in the United States is eroding to the point of nonexistence. This isn't a Disney specific thing, but the fact that Disneyland workers were notoriously sleeping in their cars in the parking lot because they couldn't afford the rent to be able to live anywhere remotely close to where they work should be a problem for anyone with the capacity to read the sentence.

Agreed. The cost of living in California is outrageous. And as you said, that's not a Disney thing- it's a problem caused by the state not the company.

 

[Jonfw2]

Hi Pickles...I'm curious to know what in my last response to you was funny.

 

[ConnerK]

Agreed. The cost of living in California is outrageous. And as you said, that's not a Disney thing- it's a problem caused by the state not the company.

Just to be clear, I'm not washing Disney's hands of it, so to speak. I think there's something terribly disingenuous about a company who makes their bread selling children an ideology that all their fairy tale dreams will come true and then when those same kids want to be part of the 'magic', does't pay them enough to be able to afford both a roof over their heads and a cheeseburger for their trouble.

That being said, you're right when you say it's a state problem. More so, it's a countrywide problem, actually. I don't have the answer to how we fix that, but someone should. Inflation is insane, and wages haven't kept up with the cost of living in decades. Again, this isn't a Disney specific problem, but a company that big (especially one that seems to pride itself on more socially liberal issues) doing something to help stop that 'bleeding' for the people who work so hard for them could really potentially send a strong message and maybe even invoke some real change.

 

[Jonfw2]

Just to be clear, I'm not washing Disney's hands of it, so to speak. I think there's something terribly disingenuous about a company who makes their bread selling children an ideology that all their fairy tale dreams will come true and then when those same kids want to be part of the 'magic', does't pay them enough to be able to afford both a roof over their heads and a cheeseburger for their trouble.

That being said, you're right when you say it's a state problem. More so, it's a countrywide problem, actually. I don't have the answer to how we fix that, but someone should. Inflation is insane, and wages haven't kept up with the cost of living in decades. Again, this isn't a Disney specific problem, but a company that big (especially one that seems to pride itself on more socially liberal issues) doing something to help stop that 'bleeding' for the people who work so hard for them could really potentially send a strong message and maybe even invoke some real change.

Disney's net income (the closest thing in business to "profit") last year was about $2 billion. If every Disney employee worldwide today were given a $5 an hour raise, it would cost the company about $2 billion a year.

See the issue?

 

[Pickles516]

Whether Disney can or should pay more and for what reasons is very subjective. The fact of the matter is they've just suffered the worst financial calamity in the history of their company. As evidenced by firing their brand new CEO, they clearly haven't found their way out of these problems yet. Disney's inflows during Covid dropped 125%. That is unprecedented in modern history for a blue chip company.

Meanwhile, during all of this, THEY RAISED WAGES!!! Non union employee minimum pay was raised to $15 an hour (actually $17 in the vast majority of cases) and cast members were thrilled.

Where you deduce that a company that raised wages during a spectacular crisis is violating their "ethical" obligation is baffling.

Also, your Harvard argument is just silly. If you make $500 a year and college is $480 you cannot afford it.

We get it dude, you want your servants to be poor. You can just say that.

 

[DLgal]

Disney's net income (the closest thing in business to "profit") last year was about $2 billion. If every Disney employee worldwide today were given a $5 an hour raise, it would cost the company about $2 billion a year.

See the issue?

Maybe the Disney company needs to stop taking on so much debt due to giant media acquisitions to feed the synergy machine...

After all, isn't that what we tell consumers? To get out of debt?

 

[Jonfw2]

We get it dude, you want your servants to be poor. You can just say that.

Please refer to my comment earlier about what is and what is not an argument.

 

[Jonfw2]

Maybe the Disney company needs to stop taking on so much debt due to giant media acquisitions to feed the synergy machine...

After all, isn't that what we tell consumers? To get out of debt?

I honestly don't know the answer, but are they losing money currently on Star Wars, Marvel, Nat Geo, Fox, etc?