Magic United, the Actors’ Equity affiliate representing 1,700 character and parade performers at Disneyland, says Disney’s contract proposal leaves out paid parental leave, eliminates Easter as a paid holiday, reduces the 401(k) match and carries no pay increase in the first year.
Disney says it is not cutting anything, and both positions are accurate. This is a first contract rather than a renewal, so benefits the workers hold today do not automatically carry into it.
The Los Angeles Times first reported the details from an April 6 email it reviewed, in which a manager under Christie Sutherland, head of labor relations at Disney Experiences, told Actors’ Equity leadership the proposal excludes paid parental leave and cuts full time holidays from twelve to eleven. The union provided the email in response to a company statement.
What Is On The Table
Performers currently receive up to eight weeks of paid parental leave. The proposal drops it, removes Easter and limits how often a worker can give away a shift without a manager’s approval. The union says 25 people in the unit took baby bonding leave last year, and that workers can separately claim California family leave assistance replacing roughly 70 to 90 percent of salary depending on income.
Base pay starts at 26 dollars an hour for parade and pageant helpers and 28.25 dollars an hour for stage scheduling assistants, per the union, with about 60 percent of the unit working part time. Disneyland Resort spokeswoman Jessica Jakary says full and part time workers received a 4 percent increase last December and that annual increases continue during negotiations.
Why Both Sides Are Right
Disneyland’s Characters and Parades department stayed nonunion for decades while the rest of the resort organized. Those workers voted to unionize in 2024, began bargaining that October and have yet to reach an agreement.
Jakary says the unit is new and the talks set initial employment terms rather than modify an existing contract, so nothing is being cut, and that proposals can still change. She adds that the eleven holidays match what more than 80 percent of Disneyland Resort employees already receive. The union’s position is that a benefit left out of a first contract is a benefit workers lose.
Disney Disputes The Florida Comparison
Paid parental leave exists elsewhere in the company. Teamsters represented character performers at Walt Disney World have it in their contract, as do the IATSE Local 504 stage managers at Disneyland itself.
Disney told Fox News Digital that the Walt Disney World comparison creates confusion, because Florida has no state disability payments for parental leave of the kind California provides. The company also said it has not proposed limiting the ability to trade shifts, only the number of times a cast member can give one away without managerial approval, and that it has proposed wage increases over the term of the agreement even without an immediate one.
Al Vincent Jr., executive director of Actors’ Equity, told the Los Angeles Times the proposal is an attempt to “strip away the very things that make the Disneyland experience what it is,” and said a company cannot call itself family friendly while taking paid parental leave from workers who spend their days creating memories for other families. Jakary, in a statement to Fox News Digital, said the resort thinks highly of its performers, considers its benefits competitive and has long worked alongside the unions on property.
The union says it has seen movement on health and safety issues, which were among the reasons the group organized, and its solidarity petition has passed 1,600 signatures. Negotiations continue at a resort that raised table service prices on nearly 300 menu items last month.
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