Orlando Florida. – With 97% of votes in favor, Disney union employees approved the new contract with the company which, among other things, establishes payment of $18 an hour immediately until reaching $20 in three years.
The results of the vote on the workers’ agreement for the next 3 years were announced last Wednesday, when members ratified their vote after the historic agreement between the company and its employees, in which they agreed to increase the minimum wages last March 23.
The agreement also calls for Disney to make retroactive payments to employees (from the October 2022 date), which the previous proposal on which employees voted “no” did not include.
In an interview with Telemundo 31 on March 23, company employee Ivy Maestres said that “a lot of frustration, a lot of crying, but it was worth it. It was worth the fight.”
For her part, Amarilys Rolón, also a Disney employee, said: “We finally succeeded. We did it! We are all very happy. We got $3 plus last year’s retroactivity and the other colleagues, well, they got the minimum at $18”.
Under this new agreement, wage increases for unionized employees immediately and long-term, as all are expected to have received a raise of between $5.50 and $8.60 per hour by October 2026.
The current deal is seen by employees as worthy of their sacrifice and vastly different from the proposal they received just a month ago and rejected.
The agreement covers approximately 45,000 Disney theme park resort service workers outside of Orlando.