Union Members Reject Contract at Disneyland : Labor: Complaining of pension and job-assignment provisions, they overturn leaders’ recommendation in voting down pact calling for 9% raises over three years.

Members of five labor unions at Disneyland have rejected their unions’ recommendation and voted down a new three-year contract with the amusement park.

The contract covers about 3,000 Disneyland employees: members of the Teamsters, the Food and Commercial Workers, Service Employees, Hotel and Restaurant Employees, and Bakers’ unions. That’s about a third of the full-time workers at the amusement park.

Union members went to work at the park Wednesday without a contract after the old contract expired Tuesday and they had rejected the proposed pact by a close vote.

The unions represent the amusement park’s ride operators, ticket-takers, waiters and waitresses, busboys, janitors and gift-shop clerks, among others.

Some union members said they were angry about the unions’ failure to negotiate better pension rights; they are also upset because the unions are willing to let Disneyland force an employee who operates, say, the “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride to do occasional custodial jobs like sweeping if necessary.

“Right now, we’re spending more time fighting the union than fighting the company,” one Teamster said. “For $204 a year in union dues, we don’t feel that we’re getting our money’s worth.”

Said one ride operator: “I wasn’t hired to do custodial.” The ride operators are members of the Teamsters, which represents the largest group--1,100 members--of the five unions covered by the contract.

Disneyland declined to discuss the matter in detail; leaders of the four largest unions involved didn’t return repeated phone calls.

The five unions have operated for years under a single contract with Disneyland; the contract traditionally runs three years.

About 6,500 of the park’s 9,000 full-time employees are union members, Disney says.

Disneyland workers went on strike for 22 days--the park’s longest strike--in 1984. The only other major strike was in 1979, and it was over wages. Employees rejected Disney’s offer of wage increases of 15% over two years. But they reversed themselves just 15 days later, accepted the offer and returned to work.

But the 1984 dispute--and this one, too--are more complex disagreements between union members and their union bosses; they involve not only wages but the issue of how much leeway Disney should have in managing the park’s employees.

Disney agreed to raise wages an average 9% over the next three years under the new contract. But in return the park wants the freedom to assign somebody who operates a ride, for instance, or some other fairly elite job at the park, to do custodial work or other less prestigious work at the employee’s higher wage, if that is what is needed.

Wage increases, however, are smaller on average than in the last contract, when they averaged 11% over the three years, compared to 9% this time.

Leaders of the union locals and Disney managers negotiated until just before the old agreement expired at midnight Monday. A federal mediator said she would call the two sides together again at 10 a.m. today.