Appellate ruling requires The Walt Disney Company to comply with a 2018 City of Anaheim voter initiative establishing a higher living wage for more than 25,000 Disneyland-area workers<\/p>\n
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SANTA ANA, CA<\/strong>\u2014An appellate court ruled today that The Walt Disney Company must abide by Measure L, a 2018 voter-approved City of Anaheim Living Wage Ordinance that applies to hospitality employers in Anaheim or the Disneyland Resort that benefit from city subsidies.\u00a0 Disneyland and other employers refused to comply with the Measure.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThe only really surprising aspect of this case is how much effort Disney has devoted to avoiding paying all its employees at least $15 an hour,\u201d said attorney\u00a0Richard McCracken\u00a0of McCracken Stemerman & Holsberry LLP. \u201cThe Living Wage Ordinance was clearly aimed at large hospitality employers, and Disney is, of course, the most prominent. The Court of Appeal has carried out the intentions of the Anaheim voters.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The decision means that thousands of workers may be entitled to wages that were denied them by Disney\u2019s longtime refusal to obey Measure L and pay the standard that Anaheim voters approved. \u201cWe are thrilled by the Court\u2019s decision and hope Disney will stop fighting against paying its workers a living wage,\u201d said plaintiff\u00a0Regina Delgado, a former employee of the Plaza Inn located inside the Disneyland resort area. Delgado was earning an hourly wage of $12\/hour until August 2019, well below the $15\/hour then required under the law.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The ruling affects tens of thousands of workers at Disneyland Resorts, including park employees, hotel employees inside the resort, and resort food service workers employed by Sodexo. \u201cDisney’s ongoing refusal to pay more than 25,000 employees a living wage has resulted in this case becoming one of the largest living wage class action lawsuits,\u201d said attorney\u00a0Sarah Grossman-Swenson\u00a0of McCracken Stemerman & Holsberry LLP.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cEarning a living wage would mean I could help plan for my future and get out of poverty,\u201d said\u00a0Damien Valdovinos, a cashier employed inside Disneyland by Sodexo.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Today\u2019s ruling overturns a 2021 decision by the Superior Court of Orange County. According to\u00a0McCracken, \u201cDisney\u2019s resistance has been based on the most hypertechnical legalisms about whether it had an agreement with the City for a rebate of its taxes.\u00a0 As we urged, the Court saw through these \u2018obfuscating labels\u2019 and focused on the economic reality of Disney\u2019s agreement with the City for the development of California Adventure and Downtown Disney.\u00a0 The Court found that Disney\u2019s entitlement to a rebate is clear.\u00a0 Now the only question is how much longer Disney will string this out in order to avoid paying its employees what the law requires.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The decision comes as thousands of hotel workers across Southern California are striking for a wage that will permit them to live near where they work, as a record housing crisis forces workers to live hours away or for many, in their cars. \u201cWorkers should have the right to live near where they work, especially those who make Disney and the surrounding hotels so profitable,\u201d said\u00a0Ada Brice\u00f1o, co-president of UNITE HERE Local 11, which represents the striking hotel workers.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n While hospitality workers make the case for living wages in court and on picket lines, Disney has emerged as harshly indifferent to employees across the entire scope of the company\u2019s business. Disney CEO Bob Iger, who reportedly may earn as much as $27 million in 2023, has been a vocal opponent of the demands made by writers and actors that they be fairly compensated.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIt feels great,\u201d said\u00a0Javier Terrazas, a banquet server at Disneyland who lives in Anaheim-adjacent Garden Grove, CA. \u201cAll this time we\u2019ve been waiting for Disney to follow Measure L. I\u2019m glad the Court has agreed with Disney workers.\u201d Terrazas, a father of five, was earning an hourly rate on January 1, 2019 of $12\/hour, which went up to $13\/hour on January 1, 2020.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Alicia Grijalva, a theme park hair stylist at the park since 2017, said \u201cI would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the court of appeals for upholding the principles that no entity, not even large corporations, are above the law. I believe the intentions of the Anaheim voters were heard.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Appellate ruling requires The Walt Disney...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ca-local"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58855"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58856,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58855\/revisions\/58856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}