Walt Disney World unions reject contract offer

I'm normally one to say that asking for more in jobs that don't require particularly deep skills is a bad idea, but the circumstances are more nuanced. The biggest problem is that there just isn't any housing people can afford on these wages. Rent is still unreasonably high everywhere even remotely near the park. There is little to no bus service in the area, so you need a car. There are a ton of apartments under construction, but like the rest, they'll be cheap the first year to fill them, and then go too high.

That reality is probably a contributing factor to their inability to staff at the level they want. I understand that they're still nowhere near their targets. I think they would be screwed were it not for their college program housing, which is massive.

The wage/rent discrepancy in Orlando is real and it's absolutely forcing many hospitality workers to make decisions on relocating and/or getting out of theme park jobs.

In 2008 when I started working at Kilimanjaro Safaris I made $7.49 an hour. And that was because I got the $1/hour premium for a spieling/hazard pay attraction. But my first one bedroom apartment I got after my College Program was $585 a month (that was the total, not the split rent), and it was very, very nice and almost brand new at the time. I just looked it up, and that same apartment is currently starting at $2,089 a month, and rent no longer includes the utilities it did back in 2008.

This is another opportunity to plug Fogelsong's "Married to the Mouse" which discusses, among other things, the burden Disney's low-wage work force places on the social-services infrastructure of the surrounding counties.

https://www.goodreads.com/b..._the_Mouse

I thought Walmart had the market cornered on that aspect.

Disney made another offer that's kind of the same offer. The sticking point, understandably, seems to be that the union members don't want to "ease in" to the higher wage, they want it now. That's what the folks at Universal are getting in June. I get that. Rent isn't going down at the moment.