California Disney characters are unionizing decades after Florida peers. Hollywood plays a role

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Throughout three years of working as a parade performer at the Disneyland Resort in Southern California, Zach Elefante all the time has had a second or third job to assist him earn a residing.

In contrast to the experiences of his friends at Disney’s parks in Orlando, Florida, the place there’s a a lot smaller expertise pool, the performers who play Mickey Mouse, Goofy and different beloved Disney characters on the California parks aren’t all the time offered a constant work schedule by the corporate.

It’s among the many causes the California performers are organizing to be represented by a union now, greater than 4 many years after their Florida counterparts did so.

Whereas Disney asks character performers to be out there to work at any time, that demand isn’t all the time rewarded with scheduled work hours, the California performers stated.

“Quite a lot of performers get the sense that in the event that they don’t give their full availability, we received’t be in exhibits … and that can impression different jobs we have to maintain a residing on this space,” stated Elefante, who lives in Santa Ana, California.

Earlier this month, the California character performers and the union organizing them, Actors’ Fairness Affiliation, stated they’d filed a petition for union recognition.

It’s a special period and a special union doing the organizing this time round, so the California character and parade performers doubtless will keep away from a number of the dangerous blood that the Disney performers in Florida have skilled with their union, the Worldwide Brotherhood of Teamsters.

It has been a rocky four-decade marriage in Florida between the performers who put the “magic” within the Magic Kingdom and the Teamsters, a union traditionally fashioned for transportation and warehouse employees which had deep ties to organized crime till the late Eighties.

Why now for the California character performers, so many many years after their Florida counterparts organized? In contrast to in Florida the place performing as a personality typically is a full-time job, most of the character performers in Southern California have a number of different gigs, typically in Hollywood films and TV.

Elefante performs at rival Common Studios Hollywood and works as a tour information for the film studios. Along with performing within the “Fantasmic!” present at Disneyland, Chase Thomas works because the director of operations for a theater pageant and beforehand has had jobs as a visible results coordinator and leisure licensing agent.

Angela Nichols moved to California to be a TV author and infrequently works as a author along with her job as an leisure host at Disneyland, the place she assists the character performers once they’re interacting with visitors.

“Disney actually is a cornerstone of the tales we develop up with in our tradition. Having the ability to watch individuals immersed in these tales and dwell it out is magical,” Nichols stated. “And after we’re being supported as forged members and performers, we’re capable of make that occur. We’re simply not being arrange for fulfillment in the way in which we should be right now.”

When a lot of their Hollywood gigs dried up due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the current actors’ and writers’ strikes, the character performers wished extra constant scheduling at Disneyland as soon as it reopened after a yearlong, pandemic-related closure. The pandemic additionally made them extra alert to well being and security considerations regarding issues like hugging visitors or having sanitary costumes.

A lot of the greater than 35,000 employees on the Disneyland Resort in Southern California already have been unionized, and the parades and character division members have been among the many holdovers.

“Quite a lot of forged members wish to do that fulltime and make it work,” Thomas stated.

In contrast to their Florida counterparts, the character performers in California are being organized by a union dedicated to performers. As such, Actors’ Fairness Affiliation officers perceive the distinctive wants of the theme park performers in ways in which could be troublesome for different unions to understand.

When there’s a new stage present, the footwear of the costumes should be examined to verify the performers received’t journey or slip on stage. Union representatives be certain that “face performers,” whose faces are seen, reminiscent of Cinderella, have the precise make-up and double verify that parade dancers have ice packs out there to nurse sore knees.

Unclean costumes are a perennial drawback, and it was a high motive for the Florida performers wanting to arrange with the Teamsters within the early Eighties. The opposite causes included children kicking Disney villains like Captain Hook within the shins and adults grabbing on the chests of performers enjoying Mickey Mouse to see if there was a person or lady beneath.

Clear costumes have been so essential to the Florida character performers that greater than twenty years in the past the Teamsters succesfully inserted a contract clause to assign particular person undergarments that the performers might take house to clean after pubic lice and scabies have been shared by way of the clothes.

There all the time existed a tradition conflict in Florida between the costumed character performers and the standard Teamsters union leaders of truck drivers and warehouse employees. The drivers typically considered the performers as residing charmed lives, paid to decorate up daily as if it have been Halloween.

These tensions got here to a head within the late 2010s as a brand new chief of the native Teamsters affiliate in Orlando started concentrating on the costumed character performers for harassment. The character performers pushed again and the combat went as much as James Hoffa, then-head of the Worldwide Brotherhood of Teamsters, who intervened.

In California, Elefante is hopeful union illustration will give performers a voice in selections about points together with the larger-than-life costumes, which may trigger long-term accidents when ill-fitted, and the protection of performing in parades throughout rain.

“It’s about having a seat on the desk and being part of the dialog from the performers’ perspective,” Elefante stated.

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Related Press reporter Amy Taxin in Orange County, California, contributed to this report.

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Mike Schneider’s e book, “Mickey and the Teamsters: A Battle for Truthful Unions at Disney,” was printed in October by the College Press of Florida. Follow him on X, previously Twitter.