Adam Hefner has worked at Disneyland for seven years, mostly in the character department, embodying the world-famous and deeply beloved characters that Disney is known for. Hefner, who uses “they/he” pronouns, was hired to play “Star Wars” characters and loved it, finding “magic for myself,” they said. The character actors pride themselves on being one of the biggest-selling points of the resort. “You have the same exact attractions year over year,” Hefner said. “We’re the reason people come back.”
But the job has left its mark on Hefner. Thanks to a repetitive strain injury Hefner said they experienced while performing, they ended up needing shoulder surgery and now have a permanent range of motion disability. They’re not alone, Hefner said: Plenty of other character actors have been permanently injured by ill-fitting costumes or other physical demands of the job. (Disneyland officials did not comment on the specific allegation.)
It was these safety concerns, among others, that pushed the character actors to begin organizing a union.
Most other workers at the resort — from the people who operate the rides to those who sell merchandise to the ones who clean up after guests leave — have been represented by various unions, including the Service Employees International Union, the Teamsters union and United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. (Disclosure: SEIU and UFCW are financial supporters of Capital & Main.)
Character actors were always the holdout, but no longer. In May, the so-called pageant and parade employees at Disneyland voted 953 to 258 to be represented by Actors’ Equity Association, according to the National Labor Relations Board. (There are 1,713 such workers at Disneyland.) Hefner is now staff representative for Disneyland character actors at Actors’ Equity.
By standing shoulder to shoulder with all of the other unionized employees, character actors hope to extract concessions from the company at the bargaining table. Talks have not yet been scheduled, but the performers are hoping to begin negotiations in the fall.
In a statement, officials at The Walt Disney Co. said, “We respect our cast members’ decision. We have a solid track record of working with the unions that represent the majority of our hourly cast at Disneyland Resort and will work with Actors’ Equity Association as we remain committed to fostering a positive work experience for all.”
Some of Disneyland’s “hardest working folks,” character performers bring to their work “patience and unremitting cheerfulness,” said Abigail Disney, who directed and produced the documentary The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales with Kathleen Hughes. It features stories of underpaid Disneyland workers. (Abigail Disney, granddaughter of Disney co-founder Roy O. Disney, has no official role with The Walt Disney Co.)
The performers have an advantage over other workers because they are the public face of the company and are particularly beloved by fans, Abigail Disney said. When people return home from their trips to the resort, it’s often the photographs with characters that they look back on. “It is an important and powerful aspect of what Disney is selling people on, which is memories and love and warmth and experience,” she said. (Disclosure: Abigail Disney is a financial supporter of Capital & Main.)
But the workers aren’t always treated or compensated fairly for their labor, Disney said. A 2018 report found that almost three-quarters of workers surveyed at Disneyland said they didn’t make enough to cover basic expenses every month, and more than one in ten reported being homeless or not having a place of their own to sleep in the past two years.
The company is “selling this American Dream at the expense of hard-working people,” Disney said. She was “just really delighted” to see these workers join the others in deciding to unionize. “Now everybody at Disneyland is represented by a union,” she said. That collective power, she hopes, will push “management to take seriously that people are not endlessly replaceable, that the people in those costumes are special and important.”
“It’s easier to create an exciting and entertaining experience for guests when you yourself are happy at your job and are able to smile when you’re performing instead of grinning through pain.”~ Adam Hefner, Disneyland character actor
Character actors first started talking about unionizing after COVID-19 restrictions were lifted in 2021 for the entertainment department, and character actors weren’t allowed to wear masks, Hefner said. “We didn’t have any say in the matter,” they said. The risk was high: Excited guests not only love to snap photos but give hugs and get up close to the characters. “It really woke a lot of us up,” they said.
Then there’s the toll the job takes on workers outside of a health emergency. “There’s a lot of burnout our cast really has, and a lot of that is due to fatigue and injury,” Hefner said. Costumes shrink over time from washing and use but are “never replaced,” they said. When they are sent out for repair, costumes often come back in the same condition.
Guests can get out of hand and injure workers, too, Hefner said. Since the start of the pandemic, interactions with guests have “become drastically more violent.” Hefner recalled several instances in which guests punched character actors in the “Star Wars” section of the park, but none of the guests were removed from the resort. Hefner has served as a safety lead, and they saw people “dealing with legitimate injuries and pain” every day, they said. But people were afraid to speak up individually out of fear of being stripped of their roles. “The No. 1 issue for our entire campaign has always been safety,” they said.
Then in April 2023, the company unilaterally implemented a new attendance policy for character actors that has changed how sick days are accrued. The new policy has made it much harder for performers to call in sick without getting penalized. It was “basically handed down from what the other unions had negotiated, and it just doesn’t work for entertainment,” Hefner said. “We realized at that point that we need to have a voice.” It was the catalyst that propelled the campaign to organize character actors into high gear.
Disney officials did not respond to Hefner’s specific claims.
Character actors also hope to address pay issues at the bargaining table. The employees make a base wage of $24.15 an hour in a place where a living wage for a single, childless person is $27.57, according to a calculator developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Jobs in which workers wear large masks over their faces — called “sculpted roles” — get a premium for the physical demands of such work, but that premium is as little as 40 cents per hour, Hefner said. They want to see that premium go up, as well as their pay overall. They hope to begin bargaining with the company to craft a first contract in the fall.
Character actors are adamant that they are pro-Disney, and that was in fact part of the union organizing campaign. A better workplace won’t benefit just workers but also guests, Hefner argued. “It’s easier to create an exciting and entertaining experience for guests when you yourself are happy at your job and are able to smile when you’re performing instead of grinning through pain,” they said.
After puppeteers at the resort unionized in 2015, Disney dragged out contract negotiations for more than a year before ultimately eliminating their jobs.
The success of the unionization campaign could benefit other Disney workers by strengthening the position of janitors, sales clerks and other workers, Hefner said. The newly unionized character actors have been “graciously welcomed” into the existing labor coalition, Hefner said, adding that support from those workers will also boost their efforts to win a first contract. “We’re excited about the support from fellow workers and look forward to lending our support when needed,” they said.
That opportunity nearly arose in July. The four unions that represent 14,000 employees at the resort — the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Local 83, SEIU-United Service Workers West, Teamsters Local 495, and the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 324 — were set to strike in July over alleged unfair labor practices in contract negotiations.
But at the eleventh hour, the unions and the company reached a contract agreement and workers voted to ratify it on July 30. The new three-year contract raises their minimum hourly pay to $24 this year, which the unions called “the biggest wage increases ever.” The contract also improves attendance and sick leave policies.
That should come as a relief to Hector Ojeda, a 26-year Disneyland employee who works in costuming and is a member of SEIU USWW. While some workers make $30 an hour, he said he earned only about $20. To support his children, he works 10 to 15 extra hours a week as a DoorDash delivery driver, he said. “Everything’s expensive — clothes, food,” he said. “We’re not compensated as we should be.”
In spite of the recent contract win, Disneyland hasn’t historically shown much interest in bending to workers’ demands. After puppeteers at the resort unionized in 2015, the company dragged out contract negotiations for more than a year before ultimately canceling their show, “Disney Junior — Live on Stage,” and eliminating their jobs. At the time, the theme park denied that the cancellation was related to the negotiations.
After the voters of Anaheim passed a ballot measure in 2018 requiring any large business subsidized by the city — Disneyland has raked in billions in tax subsidies — to pay a minimum wage of $15 an hour, the company asked the city to end its tax subsidies. Many suspected that the company did not want to comply with the city’s minimum wage requirement. The ploy ultimately failed when a court found Disney liable last year for paying the higher base wage.
Disney also reneged on a $1,000 one-time bonus it promised employees after President Donald Trump’s 2018 tax cuts benefited the company with a $2 billion windfall. The company refused to dispense it to unionized workers until they secured a new contract, prompting the unions to file an unfair labor practice charge. The National Labor Relations Board eventually ruled in Disney’s favor.
But workers are riding a wave of unionization and labor activity that has swept various industries since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, from Starbucks workers voting to join a union at hundreds of stores nationwide to Hollywood actors staging a successful months-long strike.
Disneyland character actors engaged in solidarity strikes with those actors, as well as screenwriters who were on strike around the same time. “We’ve picked up on that energy,” Hefner said. “There is momentum right now.”
It’s momentum Hefner is hoping to deploy as a union representative. “It is just very surreal to be representing the people who have struggled for so long,” they said. “We’re going to have a voice now that’s actually going to be heard.”
