Character Workers Join Actors’ Equity

One other union is coming to Disneyland.

On Saturday, a majority of the amusement park’s character employees voted to unionize with Actors’ Fairness Affiliation in a Nationwide Labor Relations Board vote, ushering extra staff at Disneyland into the union fold. 9 hundred and fifty-three employees voted “sure” to hitch Fairness, whereas 258 voted “no.” The events now have a number of days to file any objections, and if none are submitted, the outcomes shall be licensed.

“They are saying that Disneyland is ‘the place the place desires come true,’ and for the Disney solid members who’ve labored to arrange a union, their dream got here true at the moment,” Actors’ Fairness Affiliation president Kate Shindle stated in a press release on Saturday. “The subsequent step shall be to collaborate with them about enhancing well being & security, wages, advantages, working situations and job safety. After that we are going to meet with representatives of the Walt Disney Firm to barter these priorities into a primary contract.”

THR has reached out to Disney for remark.

The vote, which happened between Wednesday and Saturday, sought to find out whether or not some 1,700 employees who play characters on the park and who cheer and dance at parades, in addition to the staffers who facilitate interactions between park patrons and characters and prepare these performers, would be part of Fairness. The union — greatest recognized for representing Broadway actors and stage managers — already bargains on behalf of performers in reveals at Walt Disney World and in Disney Theatricals on Broadway and on nationwide excursions. The character employees effort is their first foray into Disneyland.

Most employees at Disneyland are already unionized (represented by teams together with the Service Staff Worldwide Union, the Teamsters, the American Guild of Selection Artists and others), however character employees have lengthy been one of many few teams that aren’t represented by a labor group.

Kate Shindle, the president of Fairness, beforehand instructed The Hollywood Reporter that the organizing drive started as employees began to have office considerations amid the COVID-19 pandemic, like interacting with park guests after a interval of social distancing. “There are issues which have been defined to me which are points or considerations at Disneyland that sound very acquainted,” Shindle instructed THR. “Ensuring that costumes are cleaned between the time one individual takes them off and one other individual places them on is one thing we take care of far and wide in conventional brick and mortar theaters and out of doors theaters.”

Along with addressing security considerations, organizers are additionally looking for to lift wages, modify scheduling insurance policies and have simpler entry to medical insurance in a union contract. (Disneyland employees already obtain annual pay raises and healthcare advantages if they’re full-time staff.)

The employees first went public with their group effort in February. After Disney Resort Leisure declined to voluntarily acknowledge the group, employees filed a petition for a union election with the NLRB on April 17.

Added Shindle in her assertion after employees formally voted to unionize on Saturday, “These solid members are each pro-union and pro-Disney, and so they’re wanting ahead to assembly with their employer throughout the bargaining desk in an excellent religion effort to make each the work expertise and the visitor expertise higher.”