On Thursday, The Washington Post reported that Disney employees are pressing against a forthcoming mandate for them to return to work in-person four days a week, launching a petition to ask CEO Bob Iger to reconsider.
Disney CEO Bob Iger declared in January that employees “currently working in a hybrid fashion will be asked to spend four days a week on-site, targeting Monday through Thursday as in-person workdays.”
The petition that was provided to the Post argues that the plan, which is set to go into effect next month, would likely cause unintentional “long-term harm” to Disney. More than 2,300 employees from Disney’s various businesses, including ABC, 20th Century Studios, Marvel Studios, Hulu, Pixar, FX and others, have signed the petition.
Above 200,000 employees work for Disney overall.
The ones who signed the petition allegedly argued that the amendment will force some employees from vulnerable communities — and those who are hard to replace — to resign and will significantly reduce “productivity, output and efficiency.”
The petition states, “This policy will slow, or even reverse, our post-COVID recovery and growth by creating critical resource shortages and causing irreplaceable institutional knowledge loss,”
The video streaming behemoth is one of the major companies that have reinstituted office-work requirements as the country has returned to normal activities coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2022— Spacex, Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk told employees at both of the companies he leads that they must work at least 40 hours per week in an office.
Earlier this week, a survey released reflected that offices in 10 major cities throughout the country were half full, the highest level since before the pandemic began in March 2020.
Last month, Iger announced the plan in a letter to company employees, saying that working in the office will boost and enhance creativity in the company.
According to the report published by The New York post, an employee said “workers were not consulted about an office-work mandate beforehand. Some employees feel they are being forced out by the mandate and others plan to choose to resign, according to the petition.”
“There is value in being together, but we also need to look forward and embrace new paradigms that add value,” it states.
Disney did not return a request from the media groups for comment.
Disney’s return-to-office plan – one of the hardest of its kind in the entertainment media sector – comes as Iger attempts to lead a change at the struggling company. Before the change, employees were expected to work on site for just two or three days per week.
