The economy seems to be affecting everyone.  Walt Disney Company acknowledged that in the last six weeks, 1,900 jobs have been slashed, most of them in Florida.  In Florida alone, 900 layoffs occurred and 500 vacant jobs will go unfilled.

Disneyland in Anaheim, California also suffered, with 200 layoffs and 100 unfilled positions.  The company stated that it has been affected by the recession, and has had to offer huge discounts to keep attendance up.  Disney began downsizing on February 18th.

According to the company, most of the layoffs pertain to management, executive and administrative positions.  Before the layoffs and buyouts, Disney claimed to have about 62,000 local employees.

For weeks, Disney refrained from revealing the total number of layoffs as it spread across the entire operation.  Some departments affected included entertainment, transportation, finance and human resources.

Disney did not notify the state about the layoffs, which is against a federal law known as the Worker Adjustment Retraining Notification Act (WARN).  The company stated that it was not required to give a notice because the cuts involved multiple sites, and that their company is not a single-site operation.

There are exemptions to the single-site rule outlined by the U.S. Department of Labor regarding notice, but there seem to be differences of opinion regarding this matter.  The Labor Department states that the single-site definition is not to be used for the single purpose of evading WARN notices.

So far, it appears that most of the layoffs have affected more salaried than hourly employees.  These employees received severance packages with benefits for a 60 day period.  Union representatives said they will oppose any efforts to cut remaining employees hours.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 3rd, 2009 at 8:10 pm and is filed under Economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.