Warehouse Workers Carry Protest to Disney’s House

About 25 warehouse workers demonstrated in front of the North Hollywood residence of Roy Disney Tuesday, demanding that he order one of his subsidiary companies to negotiate with employees over wages and union representation.

“We’re being ripped off,” said Susana Menendez, a Show Industries/Music Plus worker who marched in front of the house on Arcola Avenue. “They think because we’re Latino that they can do anything to us.”

No one answered the bell at the Disney residence and representatives of Show Industries could not be reached for for comment.

Warehouse workers at Show Industries/Music plus voted overwhelmingly in November to have Teamsters Union Local 598 represent them in negotiating a labor contract, said Carrie Biggs-Adams, a labor union consultant.

But the company appealed the vote to the National Labor Relations Board, an effort to stall talks over wages and health benefits, demonstrators contended. Many of the protesters work for the federal minimum wage and the majority of the 200 warehouse workers are Latino, Biggs-Adams said. Union officials said Disney is the chairman of the board of Shamrock Holdings, which owns Show Industries/Music Plus. “We want him to instruct his subsidiary to sit down and start bargaining,” Biggs-Adams said.

As protesters cheered and whistled, Menendez used a baseball bat to burst a brightly colored Mickey Mouse pinata that dangled from a tree in front of the Disney residence. Pennies and Mickey Mouse Band-Aids spilled onto the concrete, “symbolic of the bad medical care and the low pay,” Carrie said.