When Workers Unite, Even Disney Has to Listen

It’s difficult to overstate the significance of last week’s final approval of a $233 million settlement between the Walt Disney Co. and the tens of thousands of Disneyland employees whom the company has underpaid for years.

This is a battle that dates to 2018, when Anaheim voters passed a measure — backed by a coalition of unions — that was squarely intended to force the House of Mouse to pay workers something approaching a living wage. Instead, Disney resisted the law for years before finally being held accountable.
 

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The settlement certainly matters at the top line. Most of that money will be going to more than 50,000 Disneyland workers who for several years were paid less than they should have been — in some cases, far less.

The court’s approval of the settlement also marks the final, official repudiation of Disney’s tactics in skirting the wage law, known in Anaheim as Measure L. The company’s strategy — to deny that the law applied to Disneyland, thus prompting a 2019 class action against it that dragged on for six years — cost the workers heartache and much-needed raises. Now, though, the workers are getting what they’re owed in back pay, plus interest and penalties accruing from the stall tactics. Even their retirement accounts get a boost.

But the most important takeaway from this case may well lie at the level of organization. It was through the coordinated efforts of multiple labor groups that the Anaheim wage law got passed in the first place — a grass-roots campaign by Disneyland workers aligned with several different unions, all of which were struggling to achieve reasonable wage gains in their separate negotiations with Disney.

The unions operate independently, and their negotiating strategies on behalf of their own members certainly can vary. But in this case, combining forces on the ground enabled them to blanket Anaheim, first gathering enough petition signatures to put the measure on the ballot and then convincing enough voters to support it. In the process, the unions began comparing notes on their respective negotiations, a practice that has since been put into play in a number of labor situations around the Los Angeles area. It’s the smart strategy when it comes to dealing with ever-larger corporate heavyweights.

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The final settlement itself was made official by Orange County Superior Court Judge William Claster. The case was decided in late 2023, when the California Supreme Court refused to hear Disney’s last-ditch appeal after an appellate court determined that Measure L indeed applied to Disneyland. But Claster’s approval was nevertheless momentous; it set in motion the payouts to Disney employees who in some cases have gone years without the money that was rightfully theirs.

The ballot materials for Measure L, which were presented as evidence during the class-action suit, make it clear that the law was always aimed at Disney. They state that a yes vote “would require specific hospitality employers in the Disneyland or Anaheim Resort” zones to pay a minimum wage of $15 an hour beginning in 2019. In this case, “specific” meant that the law would apply only to those businesses that received tax breaks from the city. (The state’s minimum wage in 2019 was $12.)

Disney contended that it didn’t receive any tax breaks from the city and wasn’t bound by the new wage law, so it was not required to pay the higher minimum wage. But a California appellate court disagreed, ruling that a 1996 agreement between Disneyland and Anaheim included a deal in which the city would repay Disney if the corporation had to cover bond payments that funded its expansion. The state Supreme Court’s denial of appeal was the end of the road for Disney legally, prompting settlement talks.

“That 1996 agreement is very complex, and maybe they were banking on no one really being able to unwind it,” said Cornelia Dai, one of the attorneys who represented Disneyland workers in the class action. “This case was a gamble, in that we knew it would be hard to explain the complex financial arrangements.”

Disney did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Speaking to the Los Angeles Times last week, Disneyland Resort spokesperson Jessica Jakary said, “Disney cares deeply about our cast members,” using Disneyland’s term for its employees. The spokesperson added that most workers in Disney’s Resort District now earn more than $22 an hour, higher than the $20.42 minimum that is currently required under Measure L.

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The settlement payout is life-changing for some who’ve worked at Disneyland for years. Nathan Delgadillo, a server at a Disneyland Resort hotel for the past seven years, said he’s in line to receive $35,000 in back pay, interest and penalties.

“There’s a couple of people who are getting $100,000,” said Delgadillo, 31. “For all the workers, this will have a profoundly positive impact. And as a union, this is our whole program — it’s like having a vision and seeing that vision come true.”

Delgadillo is a member of UNITE HERE Local 11, one of the primary drivers of the Measure L initiative along with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, SEIU-United Service Workers West, the Teamsters and others. The unions coordinated their efforts to gain petition signatures to get the measure on the 2018 ballot, then went door to door to rally voter support. (Disclosure: UNITE HERE, SEIU and UFCW are financial supporters of Capital & Main.)

“They were able to really galvanize the workers to focus on this,” said Dai, who said she has never represented a union in a legal matter. “They were at the heart of this case from the beginning. It really shows the power and strength and the importance of unions.”

That message has resonated with the broader labor movement. During 2023’s “hot labor summer,” for example, members of the Writers Guild of America and the actors’ union SAG-AFTRA walked side by side with Teamsters, hotel workers, teachers and others to demand better pay and working conditions. Those workers’ unions in turn supported the writers and actors during arduous negotiations with the mega-corporations that own Hollywood’s major studios. And union leaders told Capital & Main they’ve begun comparing notes when multiple labor groups are negotiating individual contracts with the same corporate entity. They’ve even begun attending each other’s bargaining sessions.

It took a coordinated campaign to bring a living wage to fruition in Anaheim, one that is finally about to give Disneyland workers the money they’ve been deprived of for years. It was, ultimately, a strength-in-numbers success story. And it has awakened even long-tenured unions to the idea that in an era of giant corporate ownership of business, it may take this kind of group effort to get workers the wages they need to survive.

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