Last year, The Walt Disney Company made the wrong kind of news when it laid off 250 IT workers. What made the move controversial was that foreign workers on H-1B visas were reportedly hired at the same time. This issue was even raised during this election cycle as Senator Marco Rubio was asked about it at a Republican Presidential Debate. After that unwelcomed mention, Disney said in a statement “Over the past 5 years, The Walt Disney Company has added more than 18,000 jobs in the U.S. Approximately a year and a half ago, we reorganized our Parks and Resorts IT department, taking it from a team that focused primarily on maintaining our existing systems, to one that is more focused on developing new capabilities. A focus on innovation is critical given the constant evolution of technology. Approximately 250 people were affected by the reorganization, and we were able to hire back more than 100 of them in other positions with Disney. In addition, since the reorganization, we have hired more than 140 other US IT workers into technical roles within the Parks technology team, and we are currently recruiting candidates to fill more than 100 IT positions. The Parks US IT team will ultimately be larger than it was prior to the reorganization.”
Today, as Computerworld reports, 30 laid off workers filed a lawsuit again Disney, claiming discrimination national origin and race. Sara Blackwell, who is representing the workers, said that the workers, “lost their jobs when their jobs were outsourced to contracting companies. And those companies brought in mostly, or virtually all, non-American national origin workers.” She added that the workers were laid off, “based solely on their national origin and race, replacing them with Indian nationals.”
One of the biggest complaints that laid off workers have voiced was that they were forced to train their replacements before leaving. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter this past June, Disney Chairman and CEO actually addresses this point, saying “The mistake that was made is that we asked people who were leaving to help train their successors. That’s common in the business, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s right. And looking back, I’m sorry that we did that because there’s something insulting about that. That got a huge amount of attention and rubbed people the wrong way, and I completely understand why it would. It just does not pass a smell test, even if it is common practice.”
Disney declined to comment to Computerworld about this latest lawsuit.