Over 2,300 Disney employees signed a petition against CEO Bob Iger’s order for them to return to work in the office now the coronavirus pandemic has waned.
As Breitbart News reported in January, Bob Iger ordered at-home employees to return to the office to work four days per week as the company tries to climb out of its financial hole, pleading for those “working in a hybrid fashion” to start spending “four days a week on-site, targeting Monday through Thursday as in-person workdays.”
“As you’ve heard me say many times, creativity is the heart and soul of who we are and what we do at Disney,” Iger said in the email. “And in a creative business like ours, nothing can replace the ability to connect, observe, and create with peers that comes from being physically together, nor the opportunity to grow professionally by learning from leaders and mentors.”
Iger further stressed the “tremendous value in being together with the people you work with” and that he believed “working together more in-person will benefit the Company’s creativity, culture, and our employees’ careers.”
Bob Iger and Tom Cruise attend the 95th Academy Awards Nominees Luncheon at the Beverly Hilton , in Beverly Hills, CA, Monday, Feb. 13, 2023. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
“As we embark on a new year, Disney’s historic 100th anniversary, and all the opportunities before us, we have so many reasons to be excited about the future,” he told employees. “Certainly, this is a moment of tremendous change – for our Company, for our industry, and for the global economy – but despite the challenges, at my core I remain an optimist.”
A little over a month later, thousands of employees responded to Iger’s request by signing a petition that implored him to change his mind. Per Fox News:
Employees argued the policy change will lead to “forced resignations among some of our most hard-to-replace talent and vulnerable communities” while “dramatically reducing productivity, output, and efficiency.”
They also claimed, “This policy will slow, or even reverse, our post-COVID recovery and growth by creating critical resource shortages and causing irreplaceable institutional knowledge loss.”
While some employees have been happy to return to working in offices as the pandemic waned, others have become attached to the concept of working from home.
One unnamed employee likewise told the Washington Post too many employees “adjusted really well to the flexibility at Disney that was rolled out during the pandemic.
“For that to all go away suddenly was really scary for a lot of people,” the employee said.
Disney employees are reportedly in a state of confusion over the company’s plan to move 2,000 workers to Florida from California, and they are blaming CEO Bob Chapek for the “chaos.” https://t.co/MW4FvHZnaD
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) June 22, 2022
Iger replaced former CEO Bob Chapek after Disney took a nosedive under his leadership due to fallout from the coronavirus pandemic and a series of woke blunders that destroyed the company’s brand beyond repair, starting when the company opposed Florida’s anti-groomer law that barred teachers from discussing sexuality with kindergarteners and third-graders.
The company has since “posted $20.15 billion in fourth-quarter revenues and diluted earnings per share ‘excluding certain items’ of $0.30, both of which came in below analysts’ estimates,” according to Fox Business.