Granddaughter of Walt Disney corporations co-founder Abigail Disney has spoken out against recent decisions that were made by the company. Despite her name, Ms. Disney does not hold any official positions in the company. She works independently as a documentary filmmaker and philanthropist.
Walt Disney Co. has recently furloughed 100,000 of its employees this week while saving an estimated $1.5 billion for its dividend payments to stockholders. Ms. Disney has criticized this decision as “terrible management” on her Twitter account.
Ms. Disney argued that this dividend payment is equivalent to 3 months salaries for all workers who work in their parks and hotels. All the parks owned by Walt Disney – US, France, mainland China, Hong Kong and Japan – have been closed since March because of the global pandemic.
The decision to furlough will affect half of the entire workforce employed by the media giant. One accountant told the Financial Times that this decision will save the company $500 million every month. This is around the same amount that the company reportedly lost because of the lockdown measures.
Ms. Disney said that she had been refraining from speaking out because she wanted to see how things would unfold. The company’s decision to pay out dividends in July was the critical point for her.
She pointed back to a March statement that top executives made. In that statement, former Disney head Bob Iger said that he would forfeit his $3 million salary while current CEO Bob Chapek said that he will only take half of his $2.5 million salary.
According to both Ms. Disney and accountants, the salaries only constitute a small portion of these executives’ incomes. Just last year, Iger and Chapek had earned $46 million and $47.5 million respectively from incentives and dividends.
Ms. Disney has expressed her anger that the richest 10% were taking more than 80% of the dividends while workers were suddenly left without paychecks. She pointed out the hypocrisy of Chapek who recently stated that the magic of Disney is created by their cast members.
This is not the first time that Ms. Disney has spoken against the executives of the company that bears her last name. She had criticized Iger and Chapek last year as well for receiving an excessive sum of compensation.
While it is not wrong for executives to get paid more, it is an irony that Walt Disney corporation is no different. Share with us your thoughts in the comments, and be sure to follow us on Facebook for more articles like this one.
Replaced!