The Ugly Underbelly of Disney

[BouncingTiggers 98]

Just read an article on the replacement of US workers by Disney.  Disney should be ashamed of themselves for how they treat workers.  I am seriously considering cancelling our Disney trip.  It won't matter much to Disney, but it would make me feel better.  Anyway read the story and share your thoughts.

 

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/09/07/exclusive-displaced-cast-member-how-disney-replaced-me-other-americans-with-cheap-foreigners-on-h1b-visas/

[Tri-Circle-D 2,059]

Thanks for the link.

 

So, Disney is just like every other American company- blinded by greed, and screwing American workers in favor of cheap and inferior foreign help.

 

This goes a long way toward explaining my the whole My Disney Experience mess SMB's so bad.

 

No worries, though, I'm sure Bobby and his crew are being well paid.

 

TCD

[BradyBzLyn...Mo 2,023]

So, Disney is just like every other American company- blinded by greed, and screwing American workers in favor of cheap and inferior foreign help.

 

Yep.

 

 

The article above seems to refute what was published back in April when it was reported that Disney backed off on at least some of the layoffs after the governor got involved...

 

http://orlando.suntimes.com/orl-news/7/135/176830/walt-disney-world-backs-layoffs-250-tech-workers

 

The Daily Caller and Orlando Sentinel report that 120 of the 250 originally laid off were re-hired in some other capacity. Orlando Sentinel also reports that that company added 70 more positions.

 

Two weeks ago, 30 – 35 were also notified that they would be laid off. However, this past Thursday, the Disney ABC TV Media Technology & Strategy development team told the application developers that their layoffs were being rescinded, according to Computer World.

 

A Disney ABC source confirmed this, according to the news report, but a company spokesman neither confirmed nor denied the change.

 

Here's the thread we had going in the debate forum at the time...

http://www.fortfiends.net/forum/topic/15496-fury-rises-at-disney-over-use-of-foreign-workers/

[southernview -- Ray 25]

Yep.

 

 

The article above seems to refute what was published back in April when it was reported that Disney backed off on at least some of the layoffs after the governor got involved...

 

http://orlando.suntimes.com/orl-news/7/135/176830/walt-disney-world-backs-layoffs-250-tech-workers

 

 

Here's the thread we had going in the debate forum at the time...

http://www.fortfiends.net/forum/topic/15496-fury-rises-at-disney-over-use-of-foreign-workers/

 

I don't know about the rest of the IT world, but there are several indications and a lot of evidence that the banking community is going down a similar road. 

 

My DW had worked in IT in the banking industry for almost 30 years, 12 of those being with the last company she worked for and, along with many others, received almost the same treatment as did the Disney workers.  The difference was, that they were moving their work to Mexico and they were required to stay and train these new people under the same circumstances as were the Disney people.

 

They sent the people up from Mexico and had the employees work with them directly for two months and when it was apparent that they could not learn the system in that time frame, they had to keep some of the American workers over and she was one that they held over for another month to try to get them trained.  Finally, they had to send them back to Mexico to work in the center there and had to keep a skelton crew locally in order to keep things going as they needed to go.  Those people are still there to this day and they report that the Mexicans still can't get some things straight---this after eleven months have passed.  In the meantime, they also had an outage that shut the operation down for over a day and had to be brought back up by the American workers.  We were told by one of the supervisors that are still at work locally, that they doubt that these people will ever be able to take over the whole system without their help.  One of the main problems is, that these people can only speak English at about the first grade level.  However, the bank is saving money, just not as much yet as they first thought.

 

Turns out that they did my DW a favor though, as she now has a much better job in IT with another company that she just loves.

 

People in this country need to wake up and see what is happening.  I, for one, after my DW's experience, feel guilty for patronizing Disney and I certainly would not do business with a bank that send most of their money out of the country, not to mention all of their customers confidential business.  The Federal Reserve did make them do a few things differently after finding out they were doing this, but I still wouldn't trust them.  As a side note, this particular bank had already been bought out by a foriegn banking firm and they also lied to the employees about them losing their jobs for over eight months.

 

I hope I gave the name away without saying it, as I'm not sure about posting it here.  Since this happened, I have also read where the whole banking industry is looking at doing the same thing and after what happened at Disney, it looks like they are not the only ones.

[keith_h 420]

Before retiring as a software engineer I was having a discussion with a division VP about new product areas we should look at moving into. Somehow we got side tracked into offshoring and its financial benefits to the company not to mention his bonus. He had a requirement to offshore 10% of his organization's US headcount each year. Eventually leaving only architecture and design here. One of his statements that got to me was his perspective on hiring bad employees. As he put it he could hire five people in India or at the time Eastern Europe for the cost of one here. With a failure rate of 3 out of 5 and needing the two remaining people to perform the same job as one here he still came out ahead. When I brought up customer satisfaction he said that didn't really matter as long as the shareholders were happy. He also mentioned that this was a common viewpoint across many of the USA's large companies. 

[caveat lector 181]

Onshoring continues to gather steam. Business 101 is that it is significantly more expensive to win back a customer, as opposed to retaining them. Leaders at a lot of companies have failed to recognize. It's a cycle like anything else.

[Travisma 1,317]

Onshoring continues to gather steam. Business 101 is that it is significantly more expensive to win back a customer, as opposed to retaining them. Leaders at a lot of companies have failed to recognize. It's a cycle like anything else.

It's funny that there are always 2 sides to a story. I worked part time as a Geek Squad Agent for 15 years at Best Buy. We got told numerous times the same thing about customer retention and loyalty. At the same time they were cutting staffing to the bone and sending all of their back office work overseas. They had "techs" in India remotely repairing software and virus issues on customers pcs that were on our workbench. Salespeople on the floor were told to gather customers together in a group to answer questions and give advice. Same thing one of the banks had an Indian call center for regular customers, but business customers got an American call center. It eventually blew up in their faces.

[BradyBzLyn...Mo 2,023]

Business 101 is that it is significantly more expensive to win back a customer, as opposed to retaining them. Leaders at a lot of companies have failed to recognize.

 

Truth.

[keith_h 420]

Onshoring continues to gather steam. Business 101 is that it is significantly more expensive to win back a customer, as opposed to retaining them. Leaders at a lot of companies have failed to recognize. It's a cycle like anything else.

 

It is more expensive to win back customers but many of the very large companies in this country don't care as it still costs them less than offshoring and keeping Wall Street happy. It is what I consider the pervasive shortsightedness of many executives in this country. I recall the CEO of Toyota some years back discussing in an interview why he was building a car plant in the US. He said at the time even with having to build the infrastructure needed to run the plant Malaysia would be cheaper. He said however these were short lived cost advantages if you started looking past five years and saw the cumulative effect of transporting products, long term employee training requirements, amortized costs of building infrastructure, etc. Once you got out to about five years it was actually less expensive to build and operate in the US not to mention the goodwill brought by employing American workers. Take from it what you will but we would be in a lot better shape economically today if more companies had this mindset.

[Travisma 1,317]

This is an interesting story about a small company with a purpose.

 

At one time they were a supplier to WDW, but lost the contract and almost had to shut down the company.

 

This shows how you shouldn't have all your eggs in one basket.

 

It's the same with suppliers to Wal Mart or any other large company.  They get you hooked, then they dictate terms to you because you can't afford to lose the contract.

 

But, no matter what this is an uplifting story.

 

Clearwater candy factory makes Angel Mints for a higher purpose

 

It was only after he lost his biggest customer that candy maker Scott Rehm realized who cared most about his peppermints.

 

For years, the Florida Candy Factory made the bulk of its Angel Mints and Old Fashioned Salt Water Taffy for the Walt Disney Co., where the sweets were sold in theme park gift shops and catalogs and stuffed in commemorative mugs.

 

The 4,000-square-foot factory on Lakeview Road reached sales of $1.2 million a year with Disney and smaller customers, like convenience stores and hospital gift shops.

 

But in 2000, Disney cut ties with the factory to lower costs and outsource candy manufacturing. The loss forced Rehm to go from 25 employees to seven, from nonstop production to having idle time.

 

As Rehm grappled with what to do next, he finally read the letters that for years had piled up on his desk.

 

Customers had written gripping testimonials about how Angel Mints kept their appetite alive as chemotherapy pillaged the rest of their body, how that little burst of peppermint made from a century-old recipe enlivened dormant taste buds, how the mint was a terminally ill friend's last request.

 

One wrote:

“Eating the Angel Mint has not only stopped this taste from interrupting my sleep for the entire night, but it also brings me a sense of peace because it's so comforting."

Rehm knew then that he had a new focus for his business.

 

• • •

Peppermint is considered one of the world's oldest medicines and has been used as a palliative therapy for nausea, indigestion and other discomforts.

 

In large batches, Rehm said, the oil is strong enough to suck stains out of wood and burn through jeans.

 

Lauri Wright, a dietitian and associate professor of nutrition at University of South Florida Health, said peppermint helps patients deal with chemotherapy, which leaves a bizarre, metallic taste on their tongues, sometimes called chemo mouth.

 

"Eating is such a personal thing, and they're already experiencing such a scare in their life, then to take away one of the most simple pleasures of eating, that's why we see more depression in patients going through the process," Wright said.

 

Experts are not entirely sure why chemotherapy has this effect, but it's in part because the chemicals destroy cells in the mouth, Wright said.

It leaves patients unable to taste their food, which can discourage them from eating and further weakness and weight loss. Wright said peppermint is potent enough to mask chemo mouth, even if it's only a short while of relief.

• • •

 

My mother passed away a few years ago, and the only thing she could enjoy toward the end were Angel Mints. My best friend's mom was very ill, and so I passed the candy on. It was the last thing she asked for.

• • •

Rehm said his mints have a palliative effect that other artificial candies may not because of the simple ingredients, cooking method and temperature, which haven't changed since 1919 when they were first sold on the Atlantic City Boardwalk.

 

The mints are made from pure peppermint oil, cane sugar, non-high fructose corn syrup and a dash of cream of tartar to help bind them together. That's it.

 

"I'm not trying to say we're curing cancer. We're not advanced medicine here, but from a therapeutic, palliative perspective," there's something to it, he said.

 

At the factory, sugar cane boils in copper kettles over gas stoves from the 1940s. Machines that stretch the candy and twist it into bite size pieces are more than 100 years old.

 

Rehm's father, Jerry Rehm, bought the company and recipes in 1984 from a New Jersey entrepreneur and moved the factory to the Clearwater location, in a shopping plaza with a sandwich shop and home decor store.

 

The family business now produces 30,000 mints each day. They are sold in Whole Foods, Wawa convenience stores, Ace Hardware stores and upward of 3,000 hospital gift shops across the country. Sales total about $450,000 a year, less than half of what they did with Disney, but Rehm said the factory's homey atmosphere is another secret to quality.

 

Candy making was the first job plant manager Richie Mattiace, 57, landed after high school in Philadelphia and was the only thing he wanted to do when he relocated to Florida with his wife in 1993.

 

He found the Florida Candy Factory while flipping through the yellow pages looking for work, and for the past 22 years has been part of a tiny staff in a little-known factory that is working to carry on a century's old tradition.

 

"Candy is the only job I've ever had in my entire life," Mattiace said. "Willy Wonka is my favorite character. I feel like I'm one of the Oompa Loompas. Candy just makes you happy. It makes people happy."

• • •

I ordered these for my father in law who is living in Florida currently and is fighting terminal brain cancer. Chemo and radiation have cut his appetite and nothing tastes right. He loves candy, however!

•••

About eight years ago, Rehm said family friend Rep. C.W. Bill Young arranged for him to meet with pharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb in Washington to discuss a possible partnership that could expand the mints' reach. The idea

 

was to have Bristol-Myers sponsor the Angel Mint, slap its name on the wrapper, and hand it out to patients for free, like they do pens.

 

But after four months of discussions, Rehm said the company passed on the deal for liability reasons.

 

A few years later, Rehm approached Moffitt Cancer Center with a similar pitch, but the deal would have required product testing costing upwards of $50,000, Rehm said.

"We decided then it just had to be grass roots," he said.

 

Rehm said the first step in his company's self discovery was losing a million-dollar client. The next is figuring out how to reach more patients in hospitals and cancer rooms.

 

"We'll never be a Nestle or a Hershey,'' he said, '' but I really think there's a purpose to our product.''

 

 

 

[CCIntrigue...aka Gwen 547]

Wow.  Great story.