Layoffs for almost all Live Performers

Man, I honestly really wanted to see that and then they cancelled it. I love live music as an Austinite and daughter of a musician who took me to both classical and rock concerts since I was 3! It would have been wonderful and I was really upset about Disney letting them go.

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The unintended consequence here is that these shows absorbed a lot of the crowds…The parks will continue to have very long lines for the foreseeable future and further retract from the guest experience

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Yeah I could see that especially with parades and fireworks gone. The only time we noticed a dip in lines was during lunch (eat lunch early or late people!)

and I missed trying to time BTMR with fireworks which is awesome when you nail it just right!

Given live performances are not happening anywhere (at least where I am) it makes sense that they laid them all off as it could still be a year before these kinds of activities can resume.

I have seen all the shows before, but they are not a must do (I fall asleep during Nemo…)

ha ha ha. Yeah, it’s a good show though. My hubby falls asleep in a lot of these…literally have heard the soft snores. To be fair I go hard at Disney so he’s tired from my pace. But he never falls asleep during the fireworks even if we hit the park at opening.

There are some live performances in some places. A local theatre has had a few things going on, with distancing in place.

As meme-universe Emeril Lagasse would say, “BLAM!”

Sure there is, and it lies in the intersection of “because we can” and “more money for us, [redacted] you.”

The Wall Street casino doesn’t care at all about executive compensation. Even if some dim bulb augers the company into the ground and it goes bankrupt, there’s never any meaningful effort to claw back even outrageously excessive bonuses and perks. We usually only find out about the worst of the grifts when those executives are on federal trial, as with Dennis Koslowski’s $6000 shower curtain.

What the Wall Street casino does hate with the intensity of thirty thousand suns is “headcount,” to use the sad neologism, and second to that, wages for the rank and file. So even if it was possible for Disney to cut the same expenses by reducing executive salaries and bonuses as for laying off 28000 cast members, it’s always going to be the latter.

I used to think this was wrong, both from a business and an ethical standpoint, but then my financial, intellectual, and moral betters in unforum gave me a stern lecture about how DISNEY IS A BUSINESS AND NEEDS TO MAKE A PROFIT WHARRGABRL and I got right in my thinking.

This part of your comment doesn’t make any sense to me. Millions of people around the world have returned to work during the COVID crises - retail workers, fast food workers, truckers, first responders farmers, energy workers – the list goes on. Workplaces are doing their best to maintain mask use and social distancing but it is hardly foolproof and without risk yet people have returned to their jobs.

I am not suggesting that if a Disney performer does not want to work due to COVID risk that they would be forced to, but I think there are mitigation measures you can make to have the live entertainment continue at the parks and keep these jobs if the entertainers are interested.

I work in the energy industry. We have offshore platforms where folks have to work in close proximity to each other. These folks have been diligently working through the whole pandemic to provide energy to the country. There are medical screening tools, virus testing, temperature checks, medical surveys that are used to screen these folks. It is not foolproof but it mitigates the risk.

Also, with regard to Monster’s Inc and Turtle Talk - those entertainers work behind the scenes. They are not even audience facing. It stretches the imagination that they couldn’t continue those shows with proper mitigation measures. This is just a “money grab” by Disney.

You would have us believe that Home Depot/Lowe’s/Walmart and every grocery chain in the USA can have their workers show up everyday with 1000s of customers milling about in their stores and this is fine with or without a vaccine, but Disney can’t figure out how to have some live entertainment on a stage?

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This got me curious. Did a few quick Google searches to figure this out. Apparently the average base CM pay is about $24,000/year. Now, I’m sure the average salary for the 28,000 CMs was higher, since it included performers and imagineers, some execs, etc. Regardless, the MINIMUM amount of salary Disney saves with the lay-offs per year is nearly $700,000,000. And if you use a more reasonable average salary, it is probably closer to $1.2 billion. That is just in salaries…health care savings, etc., goes up from there.

Now, the average Disney exec salary is about $215,000/year. Let’s say there are 1000 executive-level people (I don’t actually know the number, but looking at the higher levels, I found evidence of at least 300. I’m tripling that, then, just…well…because.) So, if you fired ALL of the executives, you only have saved $215,000,000…or less than a third of the amount saved from the 28,000 CMs. Of course, you can’t, in reality, fire all the execs. They run the company.

Now, much of the compensation for execs isn’t in the way of salary, but bonuses…and one would EXPECT that bonuses this upcoming year will be quite low to nothing. (Will that happen in practice? We shall see!) But regardless, if in the very least the execs took a 20% pay cut for the next year, that would amount to about about $43,000,000. That could save the likes of about 1700 base level CMs (that is to say, part-timers most likely). More likely just 1000 employees.

My numbers are conservative. I think the actual savings for the 28,000 is likely much higher.

Do with this information what you will. It was an exercise in curiosity.

You selectively quoted me. I said “[s]o even if it was possible for Disney to cut the same expenses by reducing executive salaries and bonuses as for laying off 28000 cast members,” not that it was. Disney executives have only the standard ludicrous compensation, not exceptionally ludicrous.

My point was that there’s been not a peep from analysts or institutional investors about executives re-instating bonuses at companies who are simultaneously laying off tens of thousands of rank-and-file employees. In a time where every dollar counts, there should at least be some grumbling about that. Hell, we couldn’t even, as a country, get a stimulus/bailout plan that blocked companies from using public funds for stock buybacks, which is just a bonus by a grift-ier name.

Oh…to be clear, I wasn’t actually responding to you at all…but quoting the part of what you said that triggered my curiosity is all! :slight_smile:

bateman

Statement from Actors’ Equity, the union representing the performers affected

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I wish you would use words. These pictures of Batman (yeah yeah, not Batman, but that’s what I see when I see his face!) tell me absolutely NOTHING. :slight_smile:

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Those numbers seem to confirm what I suspected. It’s easy to be emotional about the layoffs and point our fingers at the executives and their pay, playing the ‘fairness’ card. But those two things are not that linked and totally different in scale. The company has to do what it thinks will generate the most profit in both short and long term. There will be unpopular decisions along the way to accomplish that, and sacrifices have to be made somewhere if restrictions remain in place and/or people aren’t booking enough tickets and resort rooms.

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Paying executive bonuses accomplishes this?

There’s enough irony there to run a Geritol factory.

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I will be saddened even more if, when bonus time comes around, we see executives amassing bonuses throughout this mess. Since bonuses typically are based on company performance (profits? or whatever metrics they set), I would expect that they are failing to hit targets pretty much across the board.

But if execs still end up with bonuses ON TOP of not taking temporary salary cuts, it will only make them look worse!!! Even if the executives “technically” earn any bonuses based on what metrics were set/met for the year, I think it will be in bad form for them to accept them.

Even if the amounts aren’t enough to cover a fraction of the layoffs themselves, I can’t help but think the act of solidarity I mentioned before would actually potentially HELP the company’s bottom line even further because it might not alienate even more guests.

Not quite what I said. I don’t care if they get bonuses or not but admit it won’t look good to a lot of people that worry about those kinds of things, whether it’s a real factor or not. But the layoffs might represent the least of multiple evils to their balance sheets. I can’t say that for sure without seeing data, but I doubt they are happy about these layoffs or cavalier about their employees’ lives. It had to be what was considered most expendable in this moment to get back to some semblance of fiscal health. This is one moment in a long-term recovery.