A lawsuit seeks damages for Disney employees who moved from California to Florida after the company told them they were being transferred — and then backtracked.

Walt Disney Co. continues to face fallout from its scuttled plans to move 2,000 California employees to a proposed Florida campus — a controversial decision the company reversed last year following the return of Chief Executive Bob Iger.

In 2021, then-CEO Bob Chapek and parks and experiences Chairman Josh D’Amaroannounced plans to relocate employees supporting Disney theme parks and resorts — including the celebrated Imagineers — to a planned $1-billion office park in the Lake Nona area of Orlando, Fla. The move was designed for Disney to take advantage of Florida tax credits, but the cross-country shift was deeply unpopular among employees who were asked to uproot their lives in Southern California.

Now some Disney employees are suing the company over the canceled relocation.

According to a lawsuit filed Tuesday against Disney in Los Angeles County Superior Court, numerous workers heeded the company’s calls, dutifully sold their homes in the Los Angeles area and moved to Central Florida.

  • dogslayeggs@lemmy.world
    34·
    5 months ago

    While there are no posts here defending Disney or disparaging the employees suing, I want to add why there is a major impact on people who move away from CA.

    One thing that sets CA apart from I think the rest of the country is our limit on property tax increases. Most states, if not all others (I’m too lazy to check), raise your property based on assessed value on a regular basis. Some states do it every year, I think TX does it even more often. CA passed a law a long time ago saying that your house’s tax assessment only changes when you sell your house. It was intended to allow old people to stay in their houses when property values skyrocketed around them. It’s honestly amazing and the only reason I can keep the house I bought 12 years ago. Yes, it has loopholes that rich people can get around (buy the house with an LLC, then sell the LLC instead of selling the house), and it has also contributed to rising house values since nobody can sell their houses unless they get a significant salary increase or move out of state.

    So these people are told they have to move out of state to some brand new facility for a super stable company. They plan to be in this new place for the rest of their career, so instead of keeping their CA house and trying to rent it they decide to do the easy thing and sell so they can buy a giant house in FL. Now they have to move back to CA, but the house they sold is both more expensive AND even if it were the same price their assess tax value went from $7000/year to $21,000/year. So they need at least a $14,000/year raise (after taxes!) just to be where they were when Disney told them to move plus some sort of post-retirement annuity to keep paying that extra tax rate.