Maybe you’ve heard about this movie the Walt Disney Co. has out. It’s called Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Seems like it’s doing pretty well at the box office.
Did I see it? No.
Why? Well, for one thing, I just never turned my attention to any of the Star Wars movies, so I had no particular reason to go to the new one. But more important…I don’t give a shit about the Walt Disney Co.
Let me tell you three reasons I loathe the company:
Michael Eisner
First, my longtime employer, The Kansas City Star, was owned by Disney for a forgettable year, straddling 1996 and 1997. After the purchase, then-CEO Michael Eisner came into The Star’s newsroom and said Disney had no plans to sell The Star and three other dailies it had obtained as part of its purchase of ABC/CapCities.
A year later, all four papers were up for sale.
Second, during the time Disney owned The Star, Eisner got rid of his second in command, a former talent agent named Michael Ovitz, and gave him a severance package valued at $38 million in cash and an estimated $100 million in stock.
Third, about a year ago, Disney fired more than 200 American IT workers at Walt Disney World after forcing the workers to train foreign workers, certainly with lower salaries, to replace them.
On Monday, two of those dismissed workers, Leo Parrero, 42, and Dena Moore, 53, sued Disney and two global consulting companies that brought in the foreign workers who replaced them. Parrero and Moore contend the companies colluded to break the law by using temporary H-1B visas to bring in immigrant workers, planning all the while to replace the American workers. In the New York Times story reporting the lawsuit, Moore was quoted as saying Disney was “just doing things to save a buck, and it’s making Americans poor.”
The separate but similar Perrero and Moore lawsuits seek class-action status, meaning many of the other fired Americans could potentially gain standing. By late Monday, The Times’ story had drawn more than 650 reader comments, including this one posted by Jack Meoph of Santa Barbara, CA:
H-1B has been exploited by corporations since it’s inception to displace American workers. There is no lack of experienced workers, just a complete lack of morals by the corporations who have used this dodge to bring over cheap labor. There are seminars dedicated to the H-1B dodge/scam. If I hadn’t promised my granddaughter that I would take her to Disneyland this year, I would never go again. The Mouse has become an evil empire, and Walt spins in his grave.
Dena Moore told The Times she has 13 grandchildren and that one of the perks that went away with her job were passes that allowed her to take them to Disney World at no cost.
I remember that, too. It seemed like we had the world by the tail when Patty and I took Brooks and Charlie to Disney World on passes when they were about 9 and 8 years old respectively. (I particularly remember buying Charlie a stuffed replica of the python character Kaa and then watching the two kids rip stitching from Kaa’s jaw as they engaged in a bitter tug of war minutes after we left the park.)
Robert Iger
I tell you, though, that feeling of getting a sweet deal passed quickly after Eisner dumped The Star. Just as current CEO Robert Iger knew he was going to fire those American workers once he had them dig their own graves (training their successors), so Eisner knew when he entered The Star’s the newsroom all those years ago he was going to sell the paper, even while his lips were saying, “No, we don’t buy properties to sell them.”
No, I won’t be going to see Star Wars or any other Disney movie that comes along. And I hope Mr. Parrero and Ms. Moore are successful in getting a class-action suit established and that all the dismissed American workers get big, fat judgments for the hosing the company gave them.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Give ’em hell, Jim! The corporate world is obviously full of snakes, and Disney has its share of them. I still think about Gerald Garcia, the expediter imported by Cap Cities to clean out The Star, and how many people he “laid off” in one day — and we later got “complimentary” copies of a history of how successful the company had been. I mailed mine back to the CEO.
I don’t remember the complimentary history of CapCities, but everyone who was there at the time remembers Garcia. He’s the only manager I can recall who walked around with an actual sneer on his face.
Expediter. Sounds like a euphemism for a hit man.
Unfortunately, it’s not just Disney…there isn’t a company out there who will say outright “yep, we bought you, now we are making plans to sell you.” Most times when companies trade hands there’s an agreement in the sale that says “you have to keep this group together for a year before you sell them off again or close the office.” Then, that magic year date passes and the new owner goes about their business of either closing the place or selling it again.
As for the foreign IT…also, not just Disney.
Then, the free passes…Really, anyone who thinks “soft perks” are going to stay forever is plain crazy. If it sounds too good to be true, it is. Take advantage of soft perks immediately…they will never stay.
Corporate America stinks. The days of loyalty are gone, especially when it comes to a company being loyal to its employees. Am I a tad cynical? Maybe. Did it happen to me? Hell, yes.
Great comment, Lisa — and from someone who knows well the inner workings of big corporations.
One thing I will say, I made good money on the stock transaction when Disney bought CapCities. I still get a decent pension check from McClatchy, and you told me you got a nice severance package from your employer.
So, yes, these big companies do outrageous things but often there are some longer lasting “perks.”
Amen, Lisa. I’ve worked in corporate America my whole life. When I started, I had an idealized view of mutual loyalty and mutually beneficial relationships whereby I work my butt of for the firm and they take care of me. I’ve only worked for a couple of companies like that, and both ended up being sold and gutted. I quickly learned that I have to put myself first, because the company puts me much further down that list. It’s a shame, too. Mutually beneficial arrangements are better for all parties, including shareholders. But the short-term stock price view of a business has destroyed any long-term thinking about value and meaning in companies–especially publicly-traded ones.
Why did the employees who at one time, i am told,, owned the paper, sell the paper? Have you written a column about this? if so, could you please provide a fresh link to it? I would like to know the story.
Good question, Vern…I was there when CapCities purchased The Star in 1977. The employees did own the paper, but upper management owned a majority of the shares, and it was upper management that made the decision.
At the time, I had been at the paper eight years, and I owned $10,000 worth of stock. In the 2-for-1 sale, I came away with $20,000 — enough for the downpayment to buy my first house.
Considering what daily papers were worth back then, it would have been virtually impossible for the paper to go very much longer under employee ownership. Cap Cities paid $125 million, which turned out to be a bargain for them. They significantly increased return on investment, taking it up to a 30-percent or so profit margin.
And that $125 million? The paper might not be worth that much now. By comparison, the Las Vegas Review-Journal sold recently for $140 million, but the buyer, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, acknowledged he paid more than the paper was worth. It had sold less than a year earlier for $102.5 million.
Fitz, I have a feeling that Mr. Meoph of Santa Barbara was not using his real name.
Catch the joke in 3…2…1…
I’m glad I missed the keyboard with my spit take… Nice catch Mike Rice.
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I remember hearing Mr. Meoph paged in the Denver airport.
I’m surprised that Hugh G. Reichten hasn’t chimed in.
Wouldn’t that be Hugh G. Rection?
I am very embarrassed about missing the joke attendant to Mr. Meoph’s name, and I am shocked and appalled that such impropriety crept into an almost-family-readable blog.
But now that the damage has been done and I’m wearing the dunce cap, I’m going to leave in Mr. Meoph’s name and comment.
I must say I think his comment would be weightier if he used another “handle.”
PLEASE, STOP … you’re killin’ me!!
For the love of God, Fitz. You are channeling your inner Hearne Christopher. And are you and Hoffman seriously blaming Garcia for doing his JOB? As ordered by Mr. Hale? I knew him. That was not a sneer. He did not relish the task, believe me. Nor did Hale. It had to be done. You all came out ahead financially. And got away before it got to really be a cake walk, like when Karen Dillon was forced to play Sophie’s Choice.
Ironically, soon we will all see you weigh in on the Presidential race. What say you, when the leading candidates, Trump and Sanders, all campaign on cutting waste and bloat.
The Star was bloated. You floated. Now you are the Goat-head.
Bleeting into the wind.
–Sarah Palin
(ABR: Always Be Rhyming!)
I have never complained about the sale to CapCities, Tracy, or CapCities management. Those were the best years. It was the subsequent sales that took things progressively downhill, to the point that Karen Dillon, who had seniority, was forced to choose whether she went or another reporter, Dawn Bormann, went. Ultimately, of course, they both went.
And Gerald…Maybe what I saw as a sneer was simply a crooked smile.
Or a grimace. I had a drink with Garcia in the lobby of the Crown Center that night, and then dinner with Jim Hale and Mike White. Hale’s chili and cornbread, the usual. I can assure you, they were both devastated at having to terminate 31 reporters and editors in that one day. Of course, Michael Davies had the easy job–as editor he didn’t have to do it. Let management do the work.
Glad to have you reconfirm, Fitz, that the Cap Cities days were the best years.
I thought Rection was too obvious. But on the subject of this post, I do remember when the announcement was made in 1995 about Disney buying The Star my editor at the time Connie Bye singing to the tune of the Mickey Mouse Club’s sign-off song: “Now it’s time to say goodbye to our good company, M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E”
I went through several similar scenarios in my long employment history. Never got easier or less painful. Sometimes I was part of the group that got coffee and doughnuts (old joke from one company downsizing), sometimes not. Seems it has become the American way.
The neutron bomb of the Capital Cities purchase was how the management / bridge was removed from the editorial side to a corporate boss / business monarchy. Newspapers at one time were looked on as living, breathing, entities. The selling out to Cap Cities ripped out the fallible, but human heart of The Star and replaced it with a calculating machine.
Damn! There aren’t many people who know about the sub-basement at 18th and Grand. Unfortunately, I can’t get past the lobby any longer, much less to the bowels of the place.
It’s all just a component of labor becoming only a commodity. The entire world is looking for a deal to drive costs down. If loyalty to a worker is now gone, then loyalty to their family and children is as well. This worldwide competition allows the few who broker the labor deals to become amazingly wealthy.
That’s where, in the case of Disney laying off the IT workers, the two global consulting companies enter the picture.
The one time I ever hear a blatant admission of bias by any of the editors of The Star concerned the Cap Cities era when I was told “the mouse has needs.”
As for the h1b visas, I believe that’s the category of visas that was greatly expanded by the recent budget deal.
Compare and Contrast:
“Disney has no plans to sell the Star” …Michael Eisner.
“I did not at any time transmit, receive,or store any highly classified emails on my private server.” …Hillary Clinton.
Which one was the biggest liar?
I wish the employees well with their attempt at a class action suit (I’ve long been disgusted by Disney and their claims to perpetual copyrights on, well…everything), but as I noted back in November such are rara avis, and becoming more so every day. I will be enormously surprised if their motion is not squashed, causing them to squirmish…
A morning comment from the great Will Notb is better than a glass of orange juice. Rara avis, AND squirmish! In one post. Circling round from his usual high brow perch to view the life in the Alaskan swamps.
Pretty good line yourself there, Tracy — circling from the high-brow perch to view the Alaskan swamps.
This post is proving to have “legs,” as we journalists would say about a story that doesn’t flame out quickly.
And to think, it all started with a pretty lame hook: your rant about a film not showing at most theatres any more: Star Wars. Skip it. Not a great film.