Disney Driven by Bottom Line
Although commendable in its attempt to provide both sides of the issue, an April 14 article (“Disney Cast Gets Leading Role”) obviously lent more of an ear to the voice of management than to the rank-and-file cast member.
To the outsider, Disney’s reorganization plan may seem to increase productivity by lowering the cast-to-management ratio and empowering cast members by enhancing the guest experience and allowing them more input in the decision-making process by eliminating working leads--the intermediaries between hourly cast members and supervision.
As noted, many hourly cast members can see through this smoke screen for what it truly is, a plan that looks not to empower the average cast member, but to lower the bottom line. However, you fail to mention that Disney’s move to replace working leads (hourly cast members who must be paid for every hour worked and compensated at a premium rate for all hours in excess of 40 per week) with salaried management personnel (who will receive the same pay regardless of hours worked) is essentially a question of economics.
Why pay someone for 60 hours a week when another can be paid for 40? Disney’s decision has less to do with increasing the average cast member’s responsibility and adding to the guest experience than subtracting from total operating costs at the expense of the hourly cast member.
You also note that 80 hourly cast members have been transformed into salaried assistant managers, but you fail to mention that many assistant managers have been external hires, individuals with no experience working in the park. This hiring policy represents a break in tradition for a company that has long prided itself on a policy of promoting hourly cast members from within the company who had distinguished themselves by outstanding service into management positions.
As an hourly cast member with 15 years of service, I may hold a more cynical view of this evolution than the average person. However, this reorganization seems to be part of a larger, disturbing trend. Each year, I have seen fewer cast members become eligible for medical benefits and more perks reduced or eliminated. This empowerment evolution seems to me a regression, another step away from the Disney ideal of a family-run business that cares for its cast members to a large corporation that values only profits.
The relationships between hourly cast members and upper management at one time were described in almost familial terms. In guiding his company, Walt Disney assumed a role more closely aligned with a patriarch than a CEO; today, the profit-driven ideology behind programs such as “Empowerment Evolution” cause these relationships to become more and more dysfunctional and hourly cast members to feel like the neglected stepchild in the Disney family.
WILL SCARLETT
Tustin