We’ve officially entered the autumn months so now is the time to reflect on the excitement of summer 2020. Or the lack thereof. While a normal summer would be filled with vacations, partying and relaxation, many of us likely had a summer stuck at home binge-watching Netflix. Obviously, this is due to the global pandemic and economic shutdown that led to the temporary closure of many businesses. One particular vacation spot that suffered was Disney’s theme parks and resorts. The low crowd turnout and recovering from the shutdown has led to Disney making drastic changes to its parks.

Back in April of 2020 Disney was able to furlough thousands of employees who were unable to work and continued to give them health care and other benefits for nearly 6 months. Since that time has passed the Florida theme parks were able to reopen partially, but California’s parks have remained closed because of the rapid spread of COVID-19 in Orange County. Even with the Florida location reopened, Disney did not get the public return they were hoping for, a return that would hopefully make up for the 91% loss in profit Disney’s parks saw in the early months of this year.

After analyzing its ability to continue as normal without losing even more money, Disney made a devastating decision. In a memo sent to employees, the head of Disney’s parks, Josh D’Amaro, announced that they’d be laying off 28,000 people across all park locations.  Both parks in Florida and California will be impacted by this. This cut will be noticeable as the parks have a combined 142,000 employees between them. Job losses are set to start by Dec. 4th.

This is especially concerning because 67% of those losing their jobs would be employees who are part-time or paid by the hour. These are the people who need their jobs more than executives and employees on salaries.

It seems appropriate to applaud Disney for being considerate enough to furlough employees for six months of the pandemic, and allowing many employees to come back for the few months they reopened. However, I think that the amount of employees losing their jobs seems suspicious considering that other areas of Disney as a whole have been doing well despite the conditions of the pandemic. Disney’s streaming platform, Disney+, has taken advantage of every opportunity to make more money, and they continue to find ways to release and produce new movies.

It seems to me like they aren’t as willing as a company to put a little more effort into ensuring that these lower-level employees have a place of work than they are to keeping their entertainment business at the top of their priority list.

Destiny Blanchard is a junior management major. She can be reached at 581-2812 or dblanchard@eiu.edu.