Disney reduces education benefit for cast members

Do people actually want freedom? I hear plenty of folks talk about how great this county is, yet in the world landscape we certainly don't fall near the top of countries in freedoms. A not insignificant portion of this country claim "muh freedoms" yet an also not insignificant portion of this country are willing and ready to give the orange man another go around, which likely won't do well for "muh freedoms". Though I suspect a venn diagram of these groups would result in a near circle, thus giving credibility to people being made to be ruled, even if they claim otherwise.

Religion also pops into mind here, a majority of the world would probably consider themselves religious. Religion, a concept that somewhere along the line was created by people, with an end goal of ruling people? (Also an easy way to answer unknowns before we figured them out, like lightning, or giant storms, etc) The premise of religion is centered around a supreme ruling being, well maybe except for Buddhism. Follow those rules, and you get a reward, break those rules and you suffer. Again, people want to be ruled?

Maybe I'm just too much of an outlier, probably 5 or 6 standard deviations from the norm. Maybe I'm just reading too deeply into a movie quote?

In general, people want freedom for themselves, but not so much for everyone else.

As an aside, one reading of the text suggests that the Xian faith is less about a ruling being that adherents seek to obey, and more about a loving being that one seeks to join. This doesn't mean "do whatever you want." Indeed, it is framed by a few core principles that serve as guides to moral action. But the idea is that one is more fulfilled and at peace when one is closer to those principles, and that's why one seeks this path. Looking back on my life, that's been largely true.

This tends to dovetail with the Stoics (e.g. Epictetus), the Contemplatives (e.g. Merton), the Franciscans, and the Jesuits. I'm dating a Buddhist, and we compare notes each week after our respective services. It is remarkable how often we find strong thematic overlaps, but that could be more because of our shared context than the source material. I don't think that's the only reason, though, as Buddhism has similar core principles in e.g. the Eightfold Path. Perhaps surprisingly, the actions one might find "supported" by each faith tradition are generally similar, though the story by which one comes to those actions might be quite different.

One of my favorite spirituality writers happens to be a Franciscan. One of the things he often says: "Things that are true are true always and everywhere." He makes a point of looking at the intersection of the world's faith traditions, and finds that they have a surprising amount in common.

PS: It is also the case that there can be a gap between a faith tradition and one's experience of a particular faith community that is nominally formed around said tradition. This is probably inescapable due to the fact that a faith community consists of people who, thanks to the human condition, are inherently fallible.

It took me a LONG time to figure this out, but this needn't be unduly difficult to resolve. One of my recovery texts puts it roughly this way, paraphrasing and emphasis added:

Though you may have no religious connections, you may wish to make contact with or take membership in a religious body. Those of us who have derided religious people will be helped by such contacts. Being possessed of a spiritual experience, you will find you have much in common with these people, though you may differ with them on many matters. If you do not argue about religion, you you will make new friends and are sure to find new avenues of usefulness and pleasure. You can be a bright spot in such congregations.

I take this to mean that if I can ignore the religion-bits and focus on the spirituality-bits of a faith community, I will get a lot out of it and may well contribute in a positive way.

This pastor and recovering addict could not have said it better.

Jeff:

If you're working full-time, do you have time for anything more than part-time school? Honest question. I found 8 hours of work a week challenging in college.

My close friend took advantage of Aspire and while working 50 hour weeks, she completed her degree in a little under 2 years.

My thoughts are that while an amazing benefit, it kinda backfired. I know of at least a dozen people who got degrees and then bailed on Disney. They found better, higher paying jobs thanks to their new degrees that Disney paid for. The only success story is my friend above, who got a degree in something completely different from her original time at school. Then moved into a new department with a higher position and pay. I think if Disney had promised a new job in the line of business you were getting a degree in, then so many might not have left the company after getting their ticket to higher pay.

Hanging n' Banging:

While not employed by an airline I do have a close friend who is a flight attendant for American Airlines and have been following their recent contract negotiations pretty closely over the past couple of years. They basically went 5 years without a raise, or any benefit increases since their last contract expired. That's beyond ridiculous...and it's all driven by corporate greed.

To put it bluntly, before their contract finally got ratified this past week (that almost resulted in a strike) it is almost criminal what the airline was paying and how they were treating their flight attendant work force.

I'm not arguing that flight attendants should be at the top of the pay scale but come on...the airline before this last quarter was turning in record profits.

I'm very conservative in my fiscal and social views. But recently I'm converting over to the "corporate greed" bandwagon and how many companies since Covid are making record profits and very little of this is trickled down to their employees.

This might seem radical, and never going to happen, but I'd love to see legislation requiring companies who make over a certain threshold of profitability to allocate a certain amount to its employees.

And before you say that all flight attendants do is serve peanuts and drinks...do a little research. The amount of training and knowledge that they are required to have, and the BS they have to deal in the cabin on a daily basis is impressive when you look at what their actual job requires.

I've got a few thoughts on this. Corporate greed is a prevalent thing, yes, but my experiences at airlines has shown that they should probably fall pretty far down the list. Airlines are so volatile that I almost would expect them to be even greedier during the good times because the bad times come, and they come hard. As such, I'd expect them to hoard profits to save for a rainy day, but just look at Southwest and Delta. Both have exceptional profit-sharing programs, and Southwest's company match on retirement borders on insane compared to what other companies pay.

While I do agree with Tommytheduck on the value of a union, or, well, at least some, my experience at two different airlines is that non-contract people are often just as well-treated as their CBA counterparts, even in areas where we wouldn't likely be in a union anyway. I never doubted at my previous airline that they were going to look out for me, even at the height of the pandemic. The company had a proven history of employee care that really made a few of the unions look spectacularly bad by comparison. One union in particular nearly allowed a bunch of its workforce to get sent out on furlough rather than make even a single temporary concession, while us non-CBA folks weren't really given a choice. It actually turned out that the concession us non-CBA folks were going to have to make never materialized.

Regardless of CBA or non-CBA, though, I still maintain that airlines are disproportionately kind compared to many other industries. Kudos to the airline unions for adding a layer of protection to many people, but recent history at airlines has shown them to be a bit more employee-focused than other places.