By Mike Schneider
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) --Disney workers are suing their employer, claiming they were fraudulently induced to move from California to Florida to work in a new office campus only to have those plans later scrapped amid a fight between the entertainment giant and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
In July 2021, the Disney Parks' chief told workers in California that most white-collar employees would be transferred to the new campus in Orlando to consolidate different teams and allow for greater collaboration.
As many as 2,000 workers in digital technology, finance and product development departments would be transferred to the campus located about 20 miles (30 kilometers) from the giant Walt Disney World theme park resort, the company said at the time.
Many workers were reluctant to make the move given their longstanding ties to Southern California and fears of uprooting their families, but Disney encouraged the move by promising a state-of-the-art, centralized workplace and greater affordability in central Florida, according to the class action lawsuit filed earlier this week.
"In sum, employees were incentivized to move through a combination of reward and punishment," the lawsuit said. "An employee could choose to move to a better life in Florida, or alternatively, choose not to move and be terminated by Disney."
By late 2021, as large numbers of Disney employees resisted relocating, Disney told them to put their moving plans on hold. Meanwhile, a group of workers who had decided to relocate, including the lead plaintiffs, Maria De La Cruz and George Fong, sold their California homes with the understanding that the company expected them to make the move, and they purchased homes in central Florida, the lawsuit said.
Fong, who works as a creative director of product design, sold his childhood home which he had inherited.
By June 2022, though, Disney leaders told the California workers that the opening of the new Orlando campus was being delayed and that they could postpone moving until 2026 but were still encouraged to relocate by 2024.
By this time, DeSantis had begun a feud with Disney over the company's public opposition to a Florida law which bars instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade. With the help of Republicans in the Florida Legislature, DeSantis revamped the governing district for Walt Disney World and installed his own appointees to its board in early 2023. Before the DeSantis takeover, the governing district had been controlled by supporters of Disney for more than five decades.
By May 2023, Disney told its workers that the plans to open the $1 billion campus in Orlando were being scrapped and that the workers who had moved to Florida could move back to California if they chose.
According to the lawsuit, many of the workers who had moved to Florida were worried about their job security if they didn't relocate back to California since most of their team members were still there and the company lacked the facilities in Florida to accommodate the teams.
After the decision to pull the plug on the Orlando campus, housing prices surrounding the campus dropped and the price of housing in California continued to increase, just as mortgage interest rates also rose higher in 2023. Fong and De La Cruz, a vice president of product design, have moved back or plan to move back to California and are seeking undisclosed economic and punitive damages.
"Other similarly situated individuals have been forced to purchase or rent less desirable housing upon their return to California," the lawsuit said.
Disney didn't respond to an email seeking comment on Friday.
Earlier this month, Disney and the DeSantis appointees to Disney World's governing district formally ended their fight over control of the government by signing a 15-year development agreement. Under the deal, the DeSantis appointees committed the district to making infrastructure improvements in exchange for Disney investing up to $17 billion into Disney World over the next two decades.
ESPN and other channels return to DirecTV with a new Disney deal after a nearly 2-week blackout
DirecTV announced Saturday it had reached a deal with Walt Disney Co. that will restore ESPN and ABC-owned stations to its service after a nearly 2-week dispute that blacked out those networks for millions of viewers across the U.S.
The end of the impasse came in time for sports fans to watch ESPN's slate of college football games on DirecTV. It also will ensure that ABC's telecast of the Emmy Awards on Sunday night will be available in more major markets where viewers subscribe to DirecTV's pay service.
ABC had been unavailable since Sept. 1 on DirecTV in several markets where the station is owned by Disney. Those were located in the San Francisco Bay Area; Fresno, California; New York; Chicago; Philadelphia; Houston; and Raleigh, North Carolina.
DirecTV's 11 million subscribers abruptly lost access to ESPN, the ABC-owned stations and other Disney-owned channels such as FX and National Geographic during the Labor Day weekend in a dispute over carriage fees and programming flexibility.
Some viewers were watching the fourth round of the U.S. Open tennis tournament when ESPN suddenly went dark and others were getting ready to watch a college football showdown between LSU and Southern California.
The impasse also kept the NFL's opening game of Monday Night Football off of DirecTV's service.
Financial details of Disney's new deal with DirecTV weren't disclosed as part of Saturday's announcement. DirecTV's payments to Disney will be based on "market-based" pricing, according to the announcement about the deal.
The agreement also will give DirecTV the ability to offer Disney's video streaming services a la carte as well as in its own bundled packages. DirecTV won the right to include ESPN's forthcoming direct-to-consumer... Read More