At least 9,000 women can now sue The Walt Disney Company for allegedly paying them less than their male counterparts.
A Los Angeles judge on Friday, December 8, certified a class action suit which was said to be the largest ever under California’s Equal Pay Act. This law protects workers from receiving salaries way less for substantially similar work due to their gender or race.
“These are important cases for reducing the wage gap and exposing discriminatory pay practices,” the plaintiff’s attorney Lori Andrus commended the recent ruling in an interview outside the courtroom in downtown Los Angeles.
“We are honored to represent the brave women who have come forward to tell the stories of so many women who are treated like cheap labor. We are pleased that the judge saw through Disney’s tactics. Fairness is the goal. That is all,” she continued.
“Disney has been gaslighting these women for four years,” she also told in another report. “They love their jobs. They love the brand. But they want to be respected and treated the way they should be in the workplace.”
The class suit is said to have been originally filed in 2019. In the document, the plaintiffs are composed of women employees who worked for Disney in California starting from April 1, 2015, in non-union positions, below the vice president level, and were assigned to a job family and level. This encompasses workers from various Disney attractions and sites namely Disneyland hotels, theme parks, and cruise lines, as well its the film and TV studios such as ABC, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and other units across job functions and levels. Pixar, ESPN, Hulu, and Fox (FX) are excluded from the case.
Andrus also states that the lawsuit represents an estimated 8,900 women as of mid-year and the numbers are said to be slightly larger when the trial begins.
In response to this, Disney expressed their disappointment with the ruling by Los Angeles Judge Elihu M. Berle, who rejected the company’s argument that the case was too wide-ranging, in a recent statement.
“We are disappointed with the court’s ruling as to the Equal Pay Act claims and are considering our options,” they said.
On the other hand, Disney’s attorney Felicia Davis argued that the plaintiffs are seeking to compare salaries across thousands of job groups and positions, which reflect the decentralized decisions of thousands of managers.
She pointed out that salaries are incomparable to one another as their respective work is not “substantially similar” just because two employees are in the same job family and level, quickly citing numerous job titles like music producers, pastry, chefs, nurses, architects, ride engineers, visual effect directors, security dog handlers, or Star Wars social media managers, to provide the counterpoint that the class members were heavily diverse to merit certification.
“These are different segments, different business areas, in different locations,” the attorney said. “They report to different managers. They are in completely different industries which pay completely differently.”
Subsequently, she emphasized that Disney would have to create and present an enormously complex defense at trial to prove that various reasonable factors such as education, training, and experience result in differences in salary pay.
“I know — it’s going to be horrendous,” Berle explained in a lightly mocking tone, further challenging the previous argument that there is no efficient system to establish pay disparities across large groups. “You’re telling me Disney has no system of categorizing pay grade levels?”
Based on reports, both sides have contacted and retained experts to prove and disprove a gender pay gap. The plaintiff’s attorney said that starting pay in the company across the class is 2% lower for women than for men.
Apart from this case, Andrus was also leading another claim similar to the mentioned suit now under the state’s Fair Employment and Housing Act, which would cover a broader group of 12,000 women. The claim accuses Disney of using a new hire’s pay history as a primary factor in determining their starting salary which Andrus states that the practice discriminates against women.
However, Berle denied class certification on that claim as he reasoned that although Disney managers were allowed until 2017 to utilize pay history as a factor, it was not a requirement. In effect, there was no company-wide policy to challenge.
With this, Davis declined to comment outside court about questions relating to Disney.
A status conference and the trial are set to be held in February and October this upcoming year, respectively, Andrus said.
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