Southern California hotel maintenance workers have filed a class-action lawsuit against Florida-based Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, alleging Disney violated the California Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) and evaded the minimum pay rate.
The lawsuit was filed March 7 in Orange County Superior Court on behalf of plaintiff Charlie Torres and more than 100 other hotel maintenance engineers and assistant maintenance engineers. The complaint alleges Disney violated multiple wage and labor laws, didn’t provide break periods, issued inaccurate wage statements and shortchanged workers on overtime pay.
Citing state orders relating to wage payments, breaks and meal times, the complaint said that class members were required to be paid a double minimum wage because Disney properties did not pay for the tools the workers required to perform their jobs.
“Disney may be the ‘happiest place on Earth’ for its visitors, but when it comes to its maintenance workers who are responsible for helping keep it happy, Disney couldn’t be bothered to even pay for basic tools,” plaintiff’s attorney Ron Zambrano said in a statement emailed to the Southern California Record.
Zambrano, a partner with West Coast Employment Lawyers, said the alleged violations of employment laws were intentional on Disney’s part.
“Mr. Torres and so many others are told to cover the expense of tools used on behalf of Disney, who flouts the law and refuses to pay its workers what they’re due,” he said. “Disney is a massive company. They know the law. But just like their character Uncle Scrooge, they choose to be cheap.”
West Coast Employment Lawyers said in a news release that the wage issues, including the failure to provide the correct amounts of overtime pay, may potentially lead to seven figures of back pay being owed to class members.
“Further, such skirting of the California labor laws presents a threat to the general public in that the enforcement of the labor laws is essential to ensure that all California employers compete equally, and that no California employer receives an unfair competitive advantage at the expense of its employees,” the complaint states.
Torres began working for Disney as an assistant maintenance engineer in February of 2022. He continues to work for Disney, according to the lawsuit.
“At all times relevant, defendants operated under and continue to operate under a common policy and plan of willfully, regularly and repeatedly failing and refusing to pay minimum compensation at the rates required by the California law,” the complaint says.
The lawsuit seeks damages including loss of earnings, deferred compensation, interest provided by state law, unpaid wages at overtime wage rates, reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs and injunctive relief based on the California Business & Professions Code.
West Coast Employment Lawyers also said that this is not the first time Disney has been accused of wage violations. Last year, another class-action complaint was filed against the company, alleging that more than 9,000 female employees were victims of gender pay disparities and were owed $150 million in back wages.
California businesses have consistently criticized PAGA for encouraging trial attorneys to file excessive levels of employment-related litigation for very technical violations.