Disney moving 2,000 jobs from SoCal to Central Florida

My first thought on this is, how many of these jobs need to be on-site at all? It's a weird time to build real estate and move people for white collar jobs.

Rates are at an all time low, housing is impossible to come by. Maybe Disney is hoping some of these 2000 leave the company???

Then why wouldn’t they just let them go?

Surprised they didn't relocate to Sandusky.

ApolloAndy said:

Then why wouldn’t they just let them go?

Serverance/unemployment? This way they say here is your job but you have to go here. Then you resign because you can’t? Big companies cannot be trusted.

That's a silly generalization. Work for a small startup with a megalomaniac owner/founder and get back to me about trust and severance.

I never said little companies could be trusted either. Honestly no one can be trusted. People tend to act in self interest over everything else. The past year should be good testament to that.

Let me make sure I understand this correctly: You believe that Disney really wants to cut these employees loose, but in order to avoid paying severance or unemployment, they would take the gamble of moving these jobs across the country on the off chance that they would just resign? I'm not sure you have a real grasp of how, you know, business and finance works.

More than you might think, yes. Move the whole department especially if it makes fiscal sense, and I. The process maybe we can lose some old entrenched employees at the top of the pay scale, rehire those at base wage and that helps offset your losses for the project.

That's just not how things work. And especially in this market, I don't think you understand how it expensive it is to hire professionals.

Before you know it someone will come on here and suggest that a theme park operator would purchase a park just to shut it down.

TheMillenniumRider said:

Honestly no one can be trusted.

How do I know you aren't lying?

TheMillenniumRider said:

I never said little companies could be trusted either. Honestly no one can be trusted. People tend to act in self interest over everything else. The past year should be good testament to that.

What I've learned over the past year is you use this assumption to justify not trusting other people and acting in your own self interest, regardless of whether it's accurate or not.

Apart from anything else, if Disney's severance package is any good at all, they would be required to offer severance if an employee's job was moved 2500 miles away and the employee was unable or unwilling to relocate. That's not substantially different from eliminating the position. Certainly they would have to pay unemployment if they were to do that.

California is an at-will state (aren't they all?). They don't have to give severance or a reason for termination.

TheMillenniumRider said:

...maybe we can lose some old entrenched employees at the top of the pay scale, rehire those at base wage and that helps offset your losses for the project.

The company had zero qualms with getting rid of people from the bottom to the very top this past year. I don't think they need to invest in a new campus on the other side of town just for an excuse to get rid of a few older employees on the other side of the country. Moving some of the departments from West to East makes perfect sense considering the Orlando area is the hub of worldwide theme park, cruise, and resort operations.

Oh I didn't even think about that. You're easily 20 minutes closer to the port in that area. (Not that all ships sail from Canaveral, but still.)

Jeff said:

California is an at-will state (aren't they all?). They don't have to give severance or a reason for termination.

True. they don't need to offer a severance package, but assuming their policies provide for one, if they don't follow through it probably leads to lawsuits (breach of contract, etc.) They could presumably eliminate it or modify it with notice of some kind. IANAL and all that.

In any case, either they don't have to offer severance (in which case they could just let them go, no move required to avoid it, as TheMillieRider suggested), or they're likely paying severance in the event of moving your job across the country. It seems less likely they don't have to offer you severance if you don't want to move along with it.

I have never, in 30 years of adulthood, seen a non-general employment contract that entitled anyone to severance.