Disney promised 2,000 of its California employees new jobs in Florida, and asked that they move, before abruptly canceling those plans and leaving the employees jobless, a lawsuit alleges.
Two employees in the complaint, which has yet to be filed in L.A., say they sold their L.A.-area homes and purchased property in Florida after the company directed them to relocate to support the construction and staffing of a planned $1 billion campus.
But the positions they moved to take were canceled, along with all 2,000 others associated with the “Lake Nona” project after a feud between the company and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis endangered its tax breaks.
Per the suit, Disney employees Maria De La Cruz and George Fong had to move back to California in order to keep their employment, with De La Cruz claiming that an inquiry on her job status in Florida was ignored.
“After all of this, will there be any security in our positions? My fear would be that we decide to stay in Florida, only to be laid off in the next year or so. I don’t want to be punished for being put into a situation my company put me in,” De La Cruz wrote to Disney Human Resources, per the complaint.
The two named parties seek to enter a class-action lawsuit with others who moved for the project, arguing that Disney misled the employees of the project’s future and “made it clear that employees who declined relocation would lose their jobs.”
The company previously drew criticism in 2017 for employee wages so low that many Anaheim park employees were left homeless, in a year when theme park revenue climbed 8%. California park workers made headlines earlier this year when they announced their intent to form a union, and garnered thousands of signatures to do so.
