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.
Google is blasted by UK watchdog for what it calls anti-competitive behavior through digital ads
Google was slammed Friday by U.K. regulators who say it's taking advantage of its dominance in digital advertising to thwart competition in Britain, ratcheting up pressure that the tech giant is facing on both sides of the Atlantic over its "ad tech" business practices.
Britain's Competition and Markets Authority said that the U.S. company gives preference to its own services to the detriment of online publishers and advertisers in Britain's 1.8 billion pound ($2.4 billion) digital ad market. The watchdog leveled its accusations after an investigation, and the findings could potentially lead to a fine worth billions of dollars or an order to change its behavior.
Google is a major player throughout the digital ad ecosystem, providing servers for publishers to manage ad space on their websites and apps, tools for advertisers and media agencies to buy display ads, and an exchange where both sides come together to buy and sell ads in real time at auctions.
"We've provisionally found that Google is using its market power to hinder competition when it comes to the ads people see on websites," the watchdog's interim executive director of enforcement, Juliette Enser, said in a press release.
The watchdog's charges, known as a statement of objections, arrive two years after it opened its investigation. Google's digital ad business is also the focus of a European Union antitrust investigation and a U.S. Justice Department lawsuit that's set to go to trial this month.
The CMA said that Google's "anti-competitive" conduct is ongoing, but the company disputed the allegations Friday.
"Google remains committed to creating value for our publisher and advertiser partners in this highly competitive sector," the company said in a prepared... Read More