ORLANDO, Fla. — Orlando’s tourism workers, long among the lowest paid in the region’s economy, must earn at least $18 per hour to meet basic needs, a hospitality industry union argues in a report released Thursday.
The report by Unite Here Local 737 found that 69% of hospitality staff surveyed at five Orlando employers, including Walt Disney World, struggled to pay their rent or mortgage each month and 39% worried about becoming homeless.
In addition, 45% said they skipped meals and 25% went without prescribed medicine because of the costs, and 62% said they had less than $100 in savings.
The workers in the study earn a median of $16.50 an hour, or $34,320 annually.
The union says Orlando’s theme parks and hotels can afford to make $18 an hour the minimum wage.
A report released Thursday showed Orange County hotels set record average room rates in September and generated all-time high tourism tax collections in the fiscal year. Additionally, Disney and Universal’s earnings have rivaled or surpassed pre-pandemic numbers in recent quarters.
Local 737 represents about 19,000 hospitality workers across Orlando, including 17,000 food and beverage and housekeeping staff at Walt Disney World alone. Other members include hotel and restaurant employees from the Orange County Convention Center, Palmas Services, Patina Restaurant Group, and Hilton hotels Buena Vista Palace and the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel at the Entrance to Universal Orlando.
The union polled 2,415 hourly workers from these companies over two weeks in October to collect the data.
The report’s release comes as Local 737 is in the midst of renegotiating contracts with Disney World and Sodexo, the food and facilities management company at the convention center. According to the union, Disney has proposed to increase hourly workers’ pay by $1 per year for five years, which the organization said is not enough.
The union spoke with employees and used tools such as MIT’s Living Wage Calculator and the Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator to arrive at the $18 figure, though it notes “most workers need to make much more than that to cover their necessities.”
“Today, Central Florida is plagued with a rent crisis and struggling families,” the report concluded. “If workers across the region’s biggest industry got an immediate, three-dollar raise, Central Florida could start to recover.”
The report also includes accounts of employees’ struggles to afford necessities.
Annie Sierra earns $16.50 an hour after working five years in an undisclosed quick service restaurant at Walt Disney World. She and her husband both work to support their two children living with them, but the couple is having trouble getting by after their rent increased three times in the past year and food costs rose by about 10% nationally from 2021.
Sierra, who has cancer, said her savings account was recently overdrawn by $8 after she bought chemotherapy treatments for herself and medical treatment for her daughter, too.
“From working so many hours to keep up with the inflation, it’s affected my health,” Sierra said in the report. “... Chemo, and being so exhausted from working through it, is killing me.”
The Service Trades Council Union, including Local 737, reached an agreement with Walt Disney World in 2018 to gradually raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour by October 2021. The agreement caused a ripple effect that led to other local hospitality employers, including Universal Orlando, raising their wages in recent years.
But the rising costs of housing, food, transportation and other necessities amid historic inflation has offset these increases, Local 737 President Jeremy Haicken told the Orlando Sentinel earlier this year.
Using just the average costs for a studio apartment, groceries, gas and car payments and insurance, the union’s report calculated a single employee working a full-time job at $15 an hour would fall $530 short of making their basic monthly expenses in Orlando. He or she would need to earn $2,766 a month but only earns $2,236 after tax, it said.
For a family of four with two working parents each earning $16.50 an hour, the shortage is even starker. The union calculated an average family would need $6,047 a month at minimum but would fall $1,533 short of meeting their expenses.
“It feels impossible because everything’s going up and we’re here with the same money,” said Maria Jose Galarraga, who earns $15 an hour at a quick service restaurant in Disney World. She said she lives with her parents because she cannot afford rent. “We’re just stuck.”
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