With more than 70,000 Cast Members from Walt Disney World about to be furloughed, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has said the state of Florida may auto-enroll these workers for unemployment benefits, according to WESH.
What’s Happening:
- As of April 19th, more than 70,000 Cast Members from the Walt Disney World resort will be on an indefinite furlough. This is 70,000 new claims to an already completely overwhelmed system for individuals to receive unemployment benefits.
- Many Cast Members have expressed a high-level of concern regarding the state’s system and whether or not it will be able to handle the influx of new claims that will be hitting the system all at once, with some individuals even holding “stay-at-home protests” where they fill their windows or decorate their lawns with signs that say “SOS #WorkersCantWait.”
- During a news conference earlier today, Florida governor Ron DeSantis said that the state knows this influx is coming so it would make sense to do something ahead of it and get affected Cast Member information directly from the Walt Disney Company, suggesting that the information could be entered into the system during slower traffic times, such as the overnight hours.
- He also added that the Disney employees wouldn’t get any kind of priority treatment, or pushed to the front of the ever-growing line of those applications waiting to receive benefits.
- While DeSantis said that this is something being considered, he hasn’t clearly stated that this is actually occuring with set procedures, so furloughed Cast Members should not assume that their information is already in the state’s unemployment system.
What They’re Saying:
- Ron DeSantis: “We basically said, OK, the system’s getting crushed, so we know this is coming… is there a way we can… maybe get the data directly from the employer, and then go ahead and put it through. I think it would make sense and it would probably be easier for everyone…[but] they wouldn’t get any special place in line.”