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Disneyland Workers Threaten Strike Action over Wages, Treatment

Disney employees rally outside the main entrance of Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California, on July 17, 2024, ahead of a planned strike authorization vote. (Photo by Frederic J. BROWN / AFP)
Disney employees rally outside the main entrance of Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California, on July 17, 2024, ahead of a planned strike authorization vote. (Photo by Frederic J. BROWN / AFP)
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Disneyland Workers Threaten Strike Action over Wages, Treatment

Disney employees rally outside the main entrance of Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California, on July 17, 2024, ahead of a planned strike authorization vote. (Photo by Frederic J. BROWN / AFP)
Disney employees rally outside the main entrance of Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California, on July 17, 2024, ahead of a planned strike authorization vote. (Photo by Frederic J. BROWN / AFP)

Hundreds of Disneyland Resort employees protested outside the world-famous California theme parks Wednesday, calling for better wages and denouncing alleged anti-union practices by the company ahead of a looming strike vote.
Featuring workers in costumes from the parks' "Indiana Jones" and "Star Wars" themed rides, among others, the rally was organized by unions representing some 14,000 Disneyland employees, from rollercoaster operators to candy makers, said AFP.
Slogans among the signs being carried included "Mickey would want fair pay" and "Disney, don't be the villain" at the march in Anaheim, near Los Angeles.
"We deserve fair wages," said 44-year-old Disneyland employee Ginny Cristales.
"A strike is our last resort, that we're not wanting to do. But if Disney doesn't comply and give us what we need, then we're all ready."
Disney has been in negotiations since April with the four California unions representing its park employees.
The talks have so far yielded nothing, and unions accuse the so-called "Happiest Place in the World" of intimidating employees.
Disney is claimed to have reprimanded and issued warnings to more than 500 employees for wearing a union pin featuring an image of Mickey Mouse's glove clenched in the shape of a fist.
"Last week, I saw a manager telling one of the cast members to remove her badge. He told her that it will be on her record card," said Cristales.
"She was stressed and she got scared."
The allegations have prompted an investigation by the National Labor Relations Board.
Disney has said the union buttons violate its "Disney Look" dress code.
Employees will vote on whether to authorize a strike this Friday. If the action is approved, unions will then decide on its terms and duration.
Contract talks with Disney are set for next Monday and Tuesday.
- 'We make the magic' -
In the wake of last year's devastating strikes by Hollywood actors and writers, another large-scale walkout at Disney would be historic.
Employees at the Disneyland resort -- composed of the Disneyland and Disney California Adventure theme parks -- have not gone on strike since 1984, according to the LA Times.
But Cristales, a mother of four, said her $2,800 monthly wage does not even cover her family's rent.
"We make the magic, they make the money," went one of the chants heard Wednesday, as passing cars honked in support.
"Disney will invest $2 billion in its park but refuses to pay workers a living age" read a slogan on a protesters' T-shirt.
Organizers said one thousand protesters attended the rally.
An AFP journalist saw several hundred march to the park's perimeter, where they tried to set up for speeches, but were told by security to move to a car park some 200 yards (meters) away.
"With today's rally, we continue to be focused on the wellbeing of our guests and cast members," said Disney in a statement Wednesday.
"We remain committed to the upcoming meetings on July 22-23 and reaching an agreement with Master Services that focuses on what matters most to cast members, positions Disneyland Resort for growth and job creation and enables us to continue delivering incredible guest experiences."

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Reviving Hollywood Glamor of Silent Movie Era, Experts Piece Together Century-old Pipe Organ

A crate containing some of the hundreds of pipes that are part of the Barton Opus 234 theater organ that is undergoing restoration are shown at Carlton Smith Pipe Organ Restorations in Indianapolis, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
A crate containing some of the hundreds of pipes that are part of the Barton Opus 234 theater organ that is undergoing restoration are shown at Carlton Smith Pipe Organ Restorations in Indianapolis, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
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Reviving Hollywood Glamor of Silent Movie Era, Experts Piece Together Century-old Pipe Organ

A crate containing some of the hundreds of pipes that are part of the Barton Opus 234 theater organ that is undergoing restoration are shown at Carlton Smith Pipe Organ Restorations in Indianapolis, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
A crate containing some of the hundreds of pipes that are part of the Barton Opus 234 theater organ that is undergoing restoration are shown at Carlton Smith Pipe Organ Restorations in Indianapolis, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

A massive pipe organ that underscored the drama and comedy of silent movies with live music in Detroit's ornate Hollywood Theatre nearly a century ago was dismantled into thousands of pieces and stashed away.
The Barton Opus, built in 1927, spent four decades stored in a garage, attic and basement in suburban Detroit. But the towering musical curiosity is being lovingly restored in Indianapolis and eventually will be trucked, piece by piece, to the Rochester Institute of Technology in western New York, to be reassembled and rehoused in a theater specifically designed to accommodate it.
In its heyday, the Barton Opus was able to recreate the sounds of many instruments, including strings, flutes and tubas, says Carlton Smith, who has been restoring the organ since 2020. It also contained real percussion instruments such as a piano, xylophone, glockenspiel, cymbals and drums and could produce sound effects including steamboat and bird whistles, Smith says.
For many moviegoers, the organs — and the organists — were the stars, The Associated Press reported.
“One guy could do it all,” Smith says. “In the big cities, they were literally filling the theaters’ thousands of seats multiple times during the day. They were showing live shows along with the films. It was a big production.”
The Barton Opus enjoyed good acoustics at the Hollywood Theatre, according to the Detroit Theatre Organ Society. The theaters in Detroit at that time, the golden age of the city's auto industry, were as glamorous as any in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, according to John Lauter, an organist and organ technician.
“We were such a rich market for moviegoers that the theater owners built these palatial places,” Lauter says. “There were no plain Jane movie houses back then.”
Lauter, who also is the director of the Detroit Theatre Organ Society and president of the Motor City Theatre Organ Society, says the Hollywood Theatre organ was one of the largest made by the Bartola Musical Instrument Co. of Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Only three were sold, while the other two were installed in the Highland Theatre in Chicago and the Rialto Square Theatre in Joliet, Illinois.
Of the three, this is “the last one left that hasn’t been altered," Smith says.
In the decades that followed, televisions began to appear in living rooms across the nation and silent movie houses fell out of favor. The Hollywood Theatre closed in the 1950s, its fixtures were sold and its famed Barton Opus was on the verge of being lost to history.
But in the early 1960s, Lauter’s friend, Henry Przybylski, bought it at auction for about $3,500. Przybylski scrambled to remove the massive instrument, parts of which stood two stories tall, before the theater was demolished.
“He pulled together all of his friends in the winter of 1963,” Lauter says. “The building had no electricity and no heat. They came in with Coleman lanterns and block and tackle.”
They took the organ apart and Przybylski — an engineer and organ buff — transported the thousands of pieces back to his Dearborn Heights home where it would remain, unassembled, for about 40 years.
“He never heard or played that instrument ever,” Lauter says. “He lived a majority of his life owning that thing. He’d roll up the garage door and there would be that console in there. He made it known it was the very best there was.”
Przybylski died in 2000, but that did not spell the end of the Barton Opus' odyssey.
Steven Ball, a professional organist who taught at the University of Michigan's Organ Department, asked Przbylski's widow in 2003 if the pipe organ was for sale.
“I came up with every last bit of cash I could,” Ball says.
But he also put the pipe organ straight into storage.
“This whole project was to see this organ through to safety, until I could find an institution to restore it to what it was," Ball says, adding that he had always hoped the Barton Opus would end up in a theater mirroring its original home.
In 2019, Rochester Institute of Technology President David C. Munson reached out to Ball, whom he had known since Munson served as the dean of engineering at the University of Michigan years earlier.
“I contacted Steven and asked where we could acquire the best theater organ,” Munson says. "Steven said, ‘Well that would be mine.’”
Ball will donate his Barton Opus to the school, where it will be the centerpiece of the new performing arts center. The theater that will house the organ is expected to open by January 2026. Restoration work on the organ is a little over two-thirds complete, according to Smith.
“The theater is designed to accommodate exactly this organ,” Munson says, adding that the architect, Michael Maltzan, "designed the pipe chambers to have the same dimension as in the Hollywood Theatre. We have all the original plans for that organ and how the pipes were laid out.”
The exact cost of the work hasn’t yet been determined, Munson says, adding, “It’s an investment we’re making, but I think the results are going to be remarkable.”