LOS ANGELES (CN) — More than a thousand performers at Disneyland — from those who dress up as Mickey Mouse, Captain Hook and Buzz Lightyear to dancers in parades and support staff — have launched an effort to unionize.
Organizers have begun circulating union authorization cards to 1,700 cast members. Should the effort prove successful, the performers union will be called "Magic United," and will be part of the Actors’ Equity Association.
"Pretty much every Disney cast member I’ve ever met loves working for Disney, loves being part of the Disney magic," said David Levy, a spokesman for the Actors’ Equity Association. "They just want the best working conditions possible."
Levy said that until a few months ago, performers at Disneyland received a base pay of $20-an-hour — $4 more than the state's minimum wage, and $1.50 short of Anaheim's living wage. According to Levy, Disney performers all received a pay increase of a bit more than $4-an-hour a few months ago, after the company heard about the nascent unionization effort.
As for those who appear in the parades, they want more control over their schedules. Parade performers, Levy says, are only paid part-time. If parades are cancelled on short notice due to weather, they often won't be paid, even if they've already showed up for work and put their costumes on.
"Because their pay is so low, for a lot of them it's a second job or a job they're doing in addition to going to school," said Levy. "Currently, the scheduling is not considerate of those realities."
Equity is also a concern.
"Parade dancers all tend to have the same body type, which is certainly unnecessary," said Levy. "The parts of their costumes that are meant to look like skin color only come in one shade."
Many of the support employees at Disneyland — including cleaning crews, food service workers, pyrotechnic specialists and security staff — are already members of a union. Performers at Disney World in Florida unionized in the 1980s, joining up with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. At the time, according to the Associated Press, cast members complained about dirty costumes and abuse from theme park guests.
In an email, Disneyland officials said, "We believe that our cast members deserve to have all the facts and the right to a confidential vote that recognizes their individual choices.”
Disneyland, which first opened in 1955, is the company's oldest theme park, and second-most visited after Disney World, having received 16.8 million visitors in 2022. During an earnings call last week, Disney CEO Bob Iger said the company's theme park sector saw record-setting revenue and income during the last quarter.
Actors’ Equity Association President Kate Shindle said, in a written statement, "Unionizing is the collective pathway to ensuring that the magic makers share not only in the happiness, but in the $9.13 billion in quarterly 'experience' revenue that Disney announced to its shareholders."
The union already represents a different class of workers at Disney World.
"We have a long and successful bargaining relationship with them," said Levy. "This whole thing is not, 'Down with the mouse.' Actually, it’s 'Up with the magic.'"
Union membership in America has declined steadily since 1960, when more than 30% of the country's workforce was unionized. Today, that number is closer to 10%, although 2023 saw more than 2,500 filings for union representation, according to the National Labor Relations Board, the highest in eight years.
Los Angeles, in particular, experienced a flurry of union activity — dubbed by some as the "hot labor summer" — with hotel workers, actors, screenwriters and school employees all going on strike at one point or another. More than 30 Starbucks locations in California have unionized, along with more than 300 additional stores in the rest of the U.S., though none have signed contracts with the multinational chain.
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