It's time to boycott Disney

[Chris James]

In the world of mega businesses we have always thought of Disney as an employee friendly company...but not any more. As an economy we suffered when so many industrial jobs were shipped overseas several decades ago. Hard to buy a pair of pants these days that aren't made in Bangladesh. Made in the USA is almost a thing of the past.

Now along comes Disney with the intention of bringing Bangladesh to us. More Americans losing jobs for the sake of saving a few pennies. And we all thought they were family friendly...this crap needs to stop.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/last-task-after-layoff-at-disney-train-foreign-replacements/ar-BBkE3Ud?ocid=LENDHP

[Graeme]

It's unclear from the article if Disney is the company doing this. There is a single paragraph near the end about a company, HCL America, that doesn't make sense unless you assume that they are the ones who actually employee these people and that they're the ones replacing the staff with people from overseas. If that's true, then that implies the entire article has been slanted to attack Disney for the actions of a third party.

Boycotting Disney for the actions of a company who won the contract to do the work three years ago doesn't seem too effective. An online petition to the Disney executives would be much more effective, I think. That way they will hopefully look at alternatives when the contract with HCL America expires.

EDIT TO ADD:

The NY Times article on the subject makes it clearer that it is the outsourcing company that is doing this, not Disney directly, though the implication from the Disney executives is that they have approved it. They state that they have also created new jobs as well as making others redundant, and claim a net 70 job increase. Being cynical, and given comments in that article, I suspect those extra 70 jobs are lower-skilled and lower-paying than the positions being made redundant.

But, if those figures are correct, then they're employing more Americans than before -- just less skilled ones...

[Cole Parker]

Really makes one angry, huh? When is our congress going to start protecting our citizens instead of our corporations? Perhaps when the corporations are no longer lobbying them.

C

[TalonRider]

I remember seeing on one of those shows that explored behind the scenes of Disney that they hired citizens from the Country of a themed area to give it more of that Countries feel.

[larkin]

Their press releases are sure to lay the blame somewhere else but this has been the corporate model for the last 20 years.

Wall street pressures any and all corporations to export as many jobs abroad as possible to boost stock prices but the gains are short term and ultimately it erodes the lives of the very people that helped make Disney and other corporate entities what they are today. Now they are cutting us loose. We should also be reminded that it is these corporations are running the country.

Disney's history is also not good. During the late 50's and early 60's Disney's biggest child star, Tommy Kirk was discovered to be homosexual. In spite of him being under contract, Walt Disney called him into his office and fired him on the spot. Finding himself in a bind he called Kirk back to finish one more project and then dismissed him.