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Disney Cuts 100,000 Workers’ Pay, Won’t Comment on Exec Bonuses

The move is expected to save Disney $500 million a month, but the company won’t say if it will pay $1.5 billion in executive bonuses.

Disney will stop paying 100,000 employees this week, nearly half its workforce, the Financial Times reports. With Disney’s parks, hotels, and retail locations in the U.S. and Europe closed due to coronavirus for nearly five weeks now—and an analyst warning the parks may not reopen until 2021—the company has taken to severe cost-cutting measures. Revenue from those attractions made up nearly half of Disney’s operating profits in 2019, and slashing employees’ pay is expected to save Disney $500 million a month, though the company will continue to provide health benefits to workers, according to FT. The company is urging its workers to apply for unemployment benefits even as it declined to comment to the FT on whether its executives will receive their annual bonuses, which last year totaled $1.5 billion. Documentarian and heir Abigail Disney highlighted the disparity on Twitter: “the REAL outrage is, of course, those bonuses... all $1.5 billion of them.”