Abigail Disney, an heiress to the Walt Disney legacy, slammed the Walt Disney Company for slashing workers’ pay while doling out massive executive bonuses in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
The world’s largest entertainment conglomerate announced this week that it was putting half its workforce on unpaid leave after shuttering its theme parks, hotels, and retail outlets in response to the coronavirus.
However, the company also decided not to alter its bonus schemes for high-paid executives. While executive chairman of Disney Bob Iger and CEO Bob Chapek decided to waive their salaries during the crisis, they will continue reaping the benefits of their compensation packages in incentive and bonus plans. Indeed, their annual salaries are only a small portion of their yearly compensation deals.
Abigail Disney found hypocrisy in the company’s move. She took to Twitter with a long thread to excoriate the “nice rhetoric” that only served to disguise the “pillaging and rampaging [of workers] by management.”
“WHAT THE ACTUAL F***????? Look, dividends aren’t ALL bad, given the number of fixed income folks who rely on them. But still 80% of shares are owned by the wealthiest 10%. So that excuse only goes so far. But the REAL outrage is, of course, those bonuses,” she said. “All 1.5 billion of them. 1.5 BILLION. That’d pay for three months salary to front line workers. And its going to people who have already been collecting egregious bonuses for years.”
Last year Abigail Disney bashed CEO Iger for earning “roughly 173 times the median Disney worker’s” pay. Also last year, she was seen stumping for a “wealth tax” as a member of a George Soros-backed, left-wing activist group. And in 2014, she joined other anti-Jewish groups in calling for divestment in companies based in Israel.
In her Twitter rant, Disney noted that she is not a member of Disney’s management, but she is an heir: “And I do carry this name with me everywhere. And I have a conscience which makes it very difficult for me to sit by when I see abuses taking place with that name attached to them.”
See her Twitter thread below.
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