Every Labor Day, Walt Disney World and Disneyland run because of tens of thousands of cast members, most of them working under a union contract. That wasn’t always true, and the story of how Disney workers got there starts with a strike Walt Disney never forgave.
What follows traces that relationship across more than eight decades. It starts with a betrayal Walt never fully got over, one that shaped how the company treated its own workforce for years afterward. From there the story moves through how much has changed since, and into a fight that’s still unresolved in the parks today. Some of what’s happening right now might surprise you, especially if you assume this is all settled history.
The Strike That Split the Studio – In May 1941, animators at Walt Disney Productions walked off the job. The studio had grown fast after the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but pay was wildly uneven between artists doing similar work, screen credit went almost entirely to Walt himself, and layoffs followed after Pinocchio and Fantasia underperformed at the box office.
Animator Art Babbitt, who had helped bring characters like Goofy and the Wicked Queen to life, became a central figure in organizing his coworkers under the Screen Cartoonists Guild, led by Herb Sorrell. When Disney fired Babbitt and several other organizers, the Guild called a strike. Roughly 300 employees walked the picket line outside the Burbank studio for five weeks.
The strike ended with a settlement brokered by a federal mediator. The Guild won recognition, better pay, and screen credit for animators who had previously gone unnamed. On paper, it was a win for the workers.
To read more about the Disney 1941 strike, we suggest reading The Disney Revolt: The Great Labor War of Animation’s Golden Age.
A Wound Walt Never Really Closed – Walt Disney took the strike personally. He had built the studio on the idea that everyone there was part of one big creative family, and he saw the walkout as a betrayal from people he trusted. Several of the animators who led the strike, including Babbitt, were pushed out of the company or saw their careers there stall for years afterward.
The bitterness didn’t stay in 1941. In 1947, Walt testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee and accused strike organizers of being Communist agitators, a claim that followed some of those animators for the rest of their careers. It’s one of the few chapters of Disney’s early history the company rarely brings up on its own, and it shaped how leadership approached organized labor for decades.
What’s changed since then is the scale. Disney didn’t stay a small, tightly controlled animation studio. It became one of the largest employers of union labor in the entertainment industry, and that shift has kept building through the last few years.
From One Contract to Nearly Every Corner of the Company – At Walt Disney World, the Service Trades Council Union represents about 45,000 cast members across six member unions, covering everyone from bus drivers and housekeepers to monorail operators and stage technicians. In 2023, that group ratified a five year agreement worth an estimated 2.2 billion dollars in combined wage gains, with 97 percent of voting members supporting it. The deal raised the minimum wage floor in stages, including a 3 dollar per hour jump by the end of that year alone.
Disneyland has its own version of this story. A coalition called Disney Workers Rising, representing about 14,000 cast members across custodial, food service, retail, and other roles, voted 99 percent in favor of authorizing a strike in the summer of 2024. It would have been Disneyland’s first walkout in 40 years. It never came to that. Disney and the unions reached a deal within days, and members ratified a three year contract that brought base pay to 24 dollars an hour, described by the bargaining committee as the biggest wage increase they had ever won.
The organizing hasn’t stayed limited to theme park operations either. Disney Animation Studios’ production management team unionized and ratified its first contract with 93 percent approval, winning wage increases between 24 and 35 percent for the classifications that had been the lowest paid in the unit.
Disneyland Resort has now worked with organized labor for about 70 years, and roughly 80 percent of its cast members currently belong to a union. That’s a long way from a company whose founder once treated unionizing as a personal betrayal.
The Fight That’s Still Unresolved – Not every recent chapter has a clean ending, and this is the part of the story that’s still being written. In early 2024, Disneyland’s parade and character performers, the cast members who play Mickey, Elsa, and the rest, organized under Actors’ Equity Association as Magic United. About 1,700 workers were involved. They won their union election that May, and first contract negotiations began that October.
Nearly two years later, there’s still no contract. As of last month, Disney’s most recent proposal reportedly drops paid parental leave entirely, eliminates a paid holiday, and reduces the company’s 401k match, according to union officials citing Los Angeles Times reporting on the talks. That’s notable because character performers at Walt Disney World and Disneyland’s own IATSE stage managers already have paid parental leave through their existing contracts. Union representatives have also pointed to a proposed zero percent wage increase in the first year of the deal as a sticking point.
Disney has pushed back on characterizing the proposal as a cut, saying the paid holiday count in its offer still matches what most Disneyland Resort employees already receive. Both sides say talks are continuing.
Walt Disney spent his last years convinced his animators had turned on him. Eighty five years later, most of the company he built runs on union labor, and the fights happening today are less about whether workers get a seat at the table and more about what’s actually offered once they’re sitting there.
Attacks on organized labor are still happening in this country, and Labor Day is a good time to remember why unions exist in the first place. The eight hour workday, paid holidays, employer benefits, and the holiday itself all trace back to labor movements that had to fight for them. That doesn’t mean every union has been run perfectly or without its own issues over the years. It means the overall good they’ve done for working people, across nearly every industry, is significant enough that it shouldn’t be taken for granted.
That applies just as much inside the parks as anywhere else. Walt Disney World and Disneyland don’t run without Cast Members, and it’s worth remembering they’re human beings with lives outside the gates. They aren’t there just to serve the whims of guests who are on vacation for a week. Most of them are working to support their own families and the people they love, same as anyone else with a job. A lot of them do it because they believe in what Walt Disney built and what the company still represents.
Disney and Organized Labor: From the 1941 Animators’ Strike to 2026’s Union Wins
