Disney heiress ‘livid’ over worker conditions, calls out lib chief Bob Iger after reportedly going ‘undercover’

(File photo by Michael Kovac/Getty Images)

Heiress Abigail Disney is claiming she went undercover at Disneyland in California and was livid over what she learned.

Abigail, granddaughter of Roy O. Disney, who co-founded The Walt Disney Company with her great uncle Walt Disney, takes great exception with current CEO Bob Iger’s nearly $66 million salary and has been beating that drum for some time, calling his compensation “insane” back in April.

And she feels Iger isn’t doing enough to rectify the huge gap between what he earns and that of hourly workers at the company.

In a recent interview with Yahoo’s “Through Her Eyes,” Disney talked about going ‘undercover’ to meet with Disneyland employees who complained about having to feign happiness while at work, even though they were struggling to put food on the table at home.

 

“Every single one of these people I talked to were saying, ‘I don’t know how I can maintain this face of joy and warmth when I have to go home and forage for food in other people’s garbage,’” Disney told host Zainab Salbi.

“I was so livid when I came out of there because, you know, my grandfather taught me to revere these people that take your tickets, that pour your soda,” she said.

The New York Post reported that original reports from April don’t mention Abigail Disney going “undercover.”

As for pointing fingers, Disney had no problem calling Iger out.

“Bob needs to understand he’s an employee, just the same as the people scrubbing gum off the sidewalk are employees,” she said. “And they’re entitled to all the same dignity and human rights that he is.”

Screengrab Bob Iger

As liberal as Disney sounds, Iger is no slouch himself and holds many “progressive” positions.

Just before Georgia passed the “heartbeat bill” that severely restricted abortions in the state, which prompted a boycott from Hollywood liberals, Iger cast doubt on whether Disney would film there.

“I rather doubt we will,” he said, according to Reuters. “I think many people who work for us will not want to work there, and we will have to heed their wishes in that regard. Right now we are watching it very carefully.”

“I don’t see how it’s practical for us to continue to shoot there,” he added, speaking in the event the law was passed.

In the early months of Trump’s presidency, Iger was part of a White House business advisory council, but he resigned in protest after President Trump decided to pull out of the Paris climate accords.

“Protecting our planet and driving economic growth are critical to our future, and they aren’t mutually exclusive,” he said in a statement. “I deeply disagree with the decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.”

As for employee compensation, in Florida, the company reached a deal in with union officials in August 2018 to pay Walt Disney World employees $15 an hour by 2021 — this being a major win for the unions.

Workers there also received a $1,000 bonus.

Abigail Disney does not have an active role in the company, but she told Yahoo that she recently sent Iger an email expressing her concerns.

“I wrote Bob Iger a very long email, and one of the things I said to him was, ‘You know, you’re a great CEO by any measure, perhaps even the greatest CEO in the country right now. You know, your legacy is that you’re a great manager. And if I were you, I would want something better than that. I would want to be known as the guy who led to a better place, because that is what you have the power to do.’”

Disney said she got “nothing” in return: “There was no answer.”

Which may or may not speak to how Iger views a Disney family member who has no responsibility to stakeholders.

As for his salary, Disney sounded a lot like Barack Obama when she said back in April that there is such a thing as “too much money.”

“When [Iger] got his bonus last year, I did the math, and I figured out that he could have given personally, out of pocket, a 15 percent raise to everyone who worked at Disneyland, and still walked away with $10 million,” she said, according to Fast Company. “So there’s a point at which there’s just too much going around the top of the system into this class of people who — I’m sorry this is radical — have too much money. There is such a thing.”

Disney reportedly has a net worth of $120 million and is apparently in the process of giving some of it away.

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