It appeared that the biggest labor dispute at Disneyland four decades ago was all about cents and dollars. Union workers asked for better pay without any cuts to their benefits as they walked away from their jobs. In turn, Disneyland said that a pay freeze was necessary for two years, in addition to ending healthcare benefits for its part-time staffers. However, the 1984 strike went a lot deeper than the competing assessment of halted contract negotiations.
For staffers, it turned into a struggle about the spirit of the legacy of Walt Disney, which imperiled the close-knit group of people involved in maintaining it.
Scholars Eric Eisenberg and Ruth Smith came to that conclusion in an analysis of the 1984 Disneyland conflict. Eisenberg and Smith interviewed managers and workers before, in the course of and following the dispute for their article in a 1987 journal. Eisenberg and Smith removed the core principles that formed the worldviews of those managers and workers and contributed to the impasse.
Workers considered Disneyland a drama and not just a theme park. After all, Disneyland workers were and are still known as cast members. More significantly, they also felt that relationships with managers were essentially familial until bitter negotiations challenged that notion. A Disneyland ride operator stated in an old interview that Walt Disney wanted a familial operation, but it became a business instead of his dream. He did not want that.
In the strike over 22 days, union workers held a vigil to mourn the supposedly dying ambition of Disney. However, what made both sides return to negotiations happened as Disneyland cast members paid to get their way back into the park and started to distribute handbills to individuals, which upended the drama about the park.
October 1984 saw the formal completion of the Disneyland strike with a contract that brought a wage freeze for 2 years for keeping healthcare benefits for its part-time staffers. Ill sentiments toward some Disneyland scabs who went to work when others were protesting, contributed to not only the continuation of its legacy but also a continued management resentment.
Eisenberg and Smith offered tips for Disneyland that highlighted the potential need for a fresh root metaphor that would view employees as full-time participants in forming Disneyland’s present existence and future operations.
