Wednesday Walk: Castle Cash
Wednesday Walk: Castle Cash
Disney's contract dispute against the backdrop of D23, Changes to Massachusetts ADU laws, and previewing an upcoming podcast
Welcome to Willoughby Hills!
Every Wednesday, I offer a few short ideas that I hope will inspire you to do some more reading, thinking, and exploring. Let’s take a little walk together and see where the path leads…
Catching Up
Hi All! I did not get a chance to publish anything this past Sunday as planned. I had a lot of half ideas that I wanted to write about, but none of them quite turned into a full idea. I kept procrastinating, hoping an idea would eventually come to me, but then I procrastinated all the way until Wednesday and here we are.
Even though I was feeling low on ideas over the weekend, I felt rejuvenated editing my latest podcast episode with author J.B. MacKinnon, author of The Day the World Stops Shopping. (I’ve mentioned his book a few times in this newsletter.) J.B. and I had a great conversation, which will be available on all podcast platforms tomorrow, but paying members have access to the episode right now.
If you aren’t already on the list, please consider upgrading your membership today. It helps support the work that I do and defrays some of the costs of producing the podcast and writing the newsletter.
There’s Always Money
For those who haven’t been following the latest news, the union representing roughly 14,000 workers at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California won a major victory at the end of July.
Workers at the resort complex (which includes Disneyland, Disney California Adventure, the Downtown Disney shopping area, and three hotels) will now see a $6.10 hourly raise over the next three years, the largest increase ever. The minimum wage is being raised 31%, from $19.90 to $26 over the next three years as well.
The new contract provides for longevity increases and more generous sick policies. But this new contract did not come without a fight.
Disney initially offered a one dollar per year increase across five years. It took the union threatening a strike, something that hasn’t happened at Disneyland since 1984, for Disney to agree to new terms.
Of course, none of this would have been possible without the unions representing those 14,000 workers. Had they tried to bargain individually, they likely would have met a quick dead end. But as a group, they had collective power to ask for and receive more.
For many small companies, increasing salaries by 31% would lead to major cost cutting in other areas, or perhaps even layoffs. But for large conglomerates that arguably have underpaid workers for years, there is always money to be found.
The pay increase did not seem to dampen any plans announced at this past week’s D23 Expo in Anaheim, where Disney executives previewed upcoming additions for fans. There were ambitious expansions announced for Disneyland, Walt Disney World, and Disney Cruise Line that amount to billions of dollars in new investments. These include large Marvel, Pandora, and Coco additions in Anaheim; Monsters Inc, Cars, Indiana Jones, and Encanto expansions in Florida; and four new cruise ships.
In short, Disney has money to pay its workers fairly and still expand its theme parks (and also pay CEO Bob Iger $31.6 million in total compensation last year). And if Disney can do it, other large companies (Wal-Mart, Amazon, etc) should be able to follow suit.
Whether through unions or other campaigns, we need to pressure companies engaged in exploitative labor practices to do better.
ADU Law Changes
A few weeks ago in this newsletter, I was lamenting the fact that I couldn’t build an accessory dwelling unit in our yard. I was hoping to add a small outbuilding to our property to serve as housing for my mother-in-law as she ages, for my children when they are grown, or as rental income for somebody looking for an affordable rental. At the time, my town had very strict laws that only permitted ADUs to fall within the building footprint (like an addition or a converted attic or basement) and to house immediate family. It did not allow for detached structures of any kind.
Last week, Governor Maura Healey signed the Affordable Homes Act, which attempts to ease the housing crisis in Massachusetts through several initiatives, including allowing for ADUs under 900 square feet on any single family zoned lot in the state by right.
“This new policy replaces a patchwork of zoning regulations across the state with a uniform law that allows homeowners on single-family lots to add these small units without needing a special permit or variance unless they want to add more than one. Construction of ADUs is still subject to local building codes. The Healey-Driscoll Administration estimates that between 8,000 and 10,000 ADUs will be built across the state over the next five years due to passage of the law.”
This is a major step forward for Massachusetts and represents one way to slowly chip away at single family zoning. If you haven’t heard it yet, my podcast with Richard Rothstein (author of The Color of Law) goes into the explicitly racist policies of the federal and local governments through much of the twentieth century around zoning and other housing initiatives.
While ADUs alone won’t undo the damage of zoning laws over the last century or solve our climate crisis, they show a willingness to begin to reimagine what our neighborhoods look like and who can afford to live in them.
Whether or not I end up building an ADU myself, I am glad to know that I now have that option.
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Other Wednesday Walks
If you’ve missed past issues of this newsletter, they are available to read here.