Over 2,300 Disney Employees Sign Petition Against Returning to the Office
One of the first major changes that Bob Iger announced following his return to the Walt Disney Company’s helm, was that Disney’s remote employees would have to return to the office four days a week.
At the time, Iger defended the decision, saying, “in a creative business like ours, nothing can replace the ability to connect, observe, and create with peers that comes from being physically together.”
As companies across the country implore their employees to return to the office, after the COVID-19 pandemic made working from home the norm, they are finding an employee pool that is hesitant to do so.
An Employee Petition
While many Disney employees grumbled at the mandate to return to the office, it seemed as if the issue had been settled.
Now however, the Washington Post is reporting that over 2,300 Disney employees have signed a petition arguing against returning.
“More than 2,300 employees signed the petition asking CEO Bob Iger to reconsider the mandate, which ranks among the strictest for big companies in the post-pandemic era, arguing that it is ‘likely to have unintended consequences that cause long-term harm to the company,’” The Post reported.
Employees further argued that the policy change would lead to “forced resignations among some of our most hard-to-replace talent and vulnerable communities” while “dramatically reducing productivity, output, and efficiency.”
Furthermore, the signers argued that the change would harm Disney’s ability to recover from their COVID-19 pandemic struggles as a whole.
“This policy will slow, or even reverse, our post-COVID recovery and growth by creating critical resource shortages and causing irreplaceable institutional knowledge loss,” the petition claimed.
What Will Disney Do?
While 2,300 signatures is not insignificant, The Post report notes that the signers “include workers across Disney’s stable of businesses, including ABC, 20th Century Studios, Marvel Studios, Hulu, Pixar, FX and others.”
Disney currently employs over 200,000 people.
While some employees were happy to return to the office, others clearly adjusted to working from home. The conflict whether work needs to happen in an office will be important for Disney, and businesses in general, to navigate.
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