The American Dream and Other Fairytales: Abigail Disney and Kathleen Hughes on Uplifting Unions and Breaking Down American Individualism

Kathleen Hughes and Abigail Disney are the Directors and Producers of The American Dream and Other Fairytales.

Why did you have to make this film, and why does this issue matter to you?

Abby: Well, it's not so much that the issue mattered to me as the people mattered to me. And they approached me, the Disneyland workers, about how long they'd been in a pitched battle with the management at Disney over their pay. At the point at which they reached out to me, they were being paid minimum wage, and 73% of them could not put together enough money to meet their basic needs. So somebody reached out to me, one person who's in the film, Ralph, on Facebook, and I ended up flying out there and meeting with them. And, you know, the more I heard, the angrier I got. I grew up with these people. My grandfather had incredible respect for them. I looped Kathy in or maybe wrangled her in, and we got started because I figured that the best way to make the case was a film.

Kathleen: Abby came back from meeting the workers in California in Anaheim, and was really riled up. I've spent time on other films, and, doing research about the kind of downward mobility of American workers, and looking at how corporate America, for better or for worse, has been pushing wages down. I was very aware of this going on, but I also immediately saw that talking about it through the lens of the Disney Corporation was a way to talk about the subject in a fresh way. I was also thrilled that Abby was brave enough to want to put her name and person into the film. 

What kinds of conversations do you hope your film will facilitate?

Abby: Short term, I want people to really talk about unions again because unions have had a very bad rap since the 1980s when there was a conscious push to disempower them. You know, you might have a management that's very professional. You might have a management that is just what Elon Musk gets out of bed and thinks today. Workers need better protection than that, and their rights need to be respected. Long term, I wouldn't mind a conversation that asks does capitalism work? Does it have to be like this in order to work? Does it always have to be about scrounging and scraping for every last penny for the people who own shares in the company, when the people who are working every day are getting squeezed and squeezed and squeezed? Is this really necessary?

Kathleen: The fact that labor unions are now starting to have some wins at Disney and other places around the country is really, really exciting, and it's just the beginning. This is the exact right time to be talking about it. I think union organizers will say that no company is going to take care of their workers out of the goodness of their hearts. Workers really do need to band together and demand change, and it's not an easy thing to do.  We've kind of lost the tradition in the last 40 years, and now it's starting to grow back. I think it's a great time to be talking about it, and I think the film really helps the conversation.

Why should young people in particular care about labor practices at Disney, in the US, or worldwide? What do you want young people to take away from the film?

Abby: Young people are closer to Disney than anyone else. I want them to understand that, as much as it's beautiful, and they love it, and it means so much to them, the company kind of depends on all that good feeling you have toward them to be able to get away with what they have been doing. They have incredible power, and everything they buy and everything they indulge in, they have power over. And so they need to bring all of themselves to the things they buy, the things that they watch, and the things that they do. Because increasingly, when young people finish high school, finish college, they're getting sucked into an employment context that is incredibly hostile to the interests of workers. Fewer and fewer people have health care benefits. Fewer and fewer people provide for their retirement. The managerial class has decided that that's really not their problem. We need young people to care because we need them to rise up and demand better.

Kathy: It's very true. And I think our generation, Abby and my generation, kind of grew up with this idea that children would do better than their parents, and that especially in America, that old American Dream that said we would all kind of prosper together. That's not the case anymore for too many people so younger people especially, really do have to fight to change the system 

How do we shift the larger culture of corporate greed and individualism tied to the myth of the American dream? What do we replace it with? And how do we get people into a new cultural ethos?

Abby: Well, as they used to say when I was a kid, that's the $64,000 question. I mean if I knew how to shift the culture, I would have done it long ago. But I will say that cultures are shifted all the time, and where we are now is the result of a conscious culture shift that took place in the 70s and 80s, and a whole kind of realignment of the idea of what American society was for and about, and what businesses are for and about. So we were shifted to this, which means it can also be shifted away from this. There was an understanding of business as a collective enterprise. Go back to FDR, go back to World War II and so forth and you can find that. People were really deprived when they were sold this bill of goods about individualism, because what they lost, more than anything, was not just their economic well-being, they lost each other. They lost the sense that they belonged to a thing greater than themselves and that their fate was tied to the fates of other people. It's kind of a dog-eat-dog world in the current incarnation, and it does not have to be this way. 

What should we replace it with? Well, I mean, I don't know. I'm not going to suggest anything in particular because I do know that all it is is management making different decisions or making them differently. You write a business plan, right, when you're running a business, you have a business plan. I'm going to sell 20 of these for $40 and here's how I'll pay for labor. The business plan always includes people as the last thing they're thinking of paying. What if they were considered the highest priority rather than the lowest, and the idea that they live in dignity wasn't an optional choice? If you moved human dignity to the front of the queue in terms of corporate priorities, you would have an entirely different country.

Kathy: I think that that's not going to really happen until workers push a lot harder to get to the front of the line, so to speak, to get onto the boards, to get into the conversation. And I think having films like ours and as many conversations as we can have is where some of this social change begins to happen. We have to show it's possible. We have to give examples where it has happened and keep the conversation alive. No one documentary film is ever gonna create a revolution, but it certainly can fertilize.

Can you talk about the formation of the new union Equity Magic United? How were the screenings of the film used to boost organizing efforts that led to the formation of Equity Magic United? How did cross-union organizing at Disneyland assist in achieving those goals?

Abby: First of all, in terms of cross-union organizing, 2019 was the first year in which the unions all got together and decided on a plan together. Up until that point, they'd always negotiated individually as unions, their individual contracts. They just were not deploying the huge amount of power that they have in making decisions, because they were allowing the company to divide and conquer. 

Kathy: I didn't know this until we started the work that at Disneyland there are like 12 unions, there's a lot of unions. All the different Disney workers belong to different unions, and then all of those unions didn't really work together and even that was so weird. People could be standing side by side at the park, employees could be standing side by side at the park, and belong to a different union.

Abby: When they did get together, in 2019, they commissioned this study, and it was news to them, and it was news to everyone just how real-world bad it was for the workers there. It had just gotten so, so bad. Equity Magic United is the new union that covers the people inside of the costumes,  the people in the parades, the dancers and the singers, so all the performers. I have always been amazed that they weren't covered and that they were not being well paid. They're astonishing people because they really bring the best of themselves to that job, and they really do have everything to do with what kind of experience people walk away from Disneyland with, so that they weren't covered made me very sad. Whenever they needed to screen the film, we offered it to them. If they wanted me to come out, I would come out and talk to them. They used the film to de-demonize the idea of a union - because that's the primary obstacle to unionizing, the way that unions have been talked about in the media. I feel really proud that we had a little something to do with that new union at Disneyland.

Kathy: It's great. It takes a long time and it's slow, steady work, and it's all paid off. The workers at the park, they’ve doubled their salaries.

Abby: They were $11 an hour when we went out there the first time, and they're at $24 an hour now. It has more than doubled for them and has made an enormous difference in the real lives of real people. When you've got four children and you have to get food on the table every single day, get the laundry done, and help them with their homework and all the rest of that, the last thing you need is, should I buy a tank of gas or a chicken for dinner tonight? You should not be having to make those choices. I think it had a huge impact on people's lives. I'm really proud of it.

What will these new contracts mean for cast members like those featured in the film?

Abby: Ellie, who is one of the people in the film, had said that she had, based on what she was being paid at Disney, she could never have children, but now she's pregnant with twins because that's how much it's changed her life. She also continues to work part-time at Disney and went back to school because that was her real dream, which was to finish school while she worked at Disney. So that's a pretty great outcome. I'm really, really happy about that. Also, Trina, who's in the film, is still working there, and she's making $24 an hour. It's just made an enormous difference in terms of them coping with all of the regular everyday difficulties of having a family of that size. I think it had a real-world impact because the union is representing them, and the union is more powerful than it's ever been. Someday $24 is not going to be enough, and this will have to start again, and because the union is more powerful than it was before, I think they'll have a better chance of getting it done quicker.

Kathy: And I think for the people in the film, I think about Ralph, it's not the same as bread and butter issues, but Ralph brought this story to Abby. I think that is one of his life's big achievements. I mean, he's got children and a family, but, I think he's very proud of having kicked this whole process off and so that's a really nice thing too. 

How does what's happening at Disney affect what's happening nationally? What kinds of changes have there been in labor practices?

Abby: Disney is such an interesting company because it's 100 years old. First of all, so every development in the last century in the way business has been practiced you can see in the history and the development of the Disney company.  It also covers multiple sectors. It's not just the parks, it's hospitality, it's travel, it's entertainment. It's a really very diverse company with lots of different interests. It's also a bellwether company. So what happens to Disney because they're so respected and because they're so huge, tends to have a trickle-down effect on other companies. When Disney goes big on a raise like this, you're going to see other companies follow their example. It has a real effect on other companies and therefore on workers.

Amazon and Starbucks are both companies formed in this new economy, and this new economy in the recent startups are almost religiously zealous about the idea that unions are always bad in every case. Amazon and Starbucks have used every dirty trick, many of them not so very legal, to keep the unions out of their companies., So, it is ugly, and probably going to get uglier because they don't want to empower their workers. This is a matter of principle. The company can pay you out of the goodness of its heart, and that's as solid as cotton candy. Or you can get paid better because it is your right to be paid better. What they object to is the idea that it's their right  - what Starbucks and Amazon and others are doing right now, Tesla, others. They object to the idea of workers declaring what their rights are in the context of a corporation, and that's just incredibly toxic for society, so we have to fight this with everything we have. 

Kathy: I think it's really interesting because we're seeing a struggle right now especially in a lot of these service places, because that's where so many of the new jobs are being created. The service economy, somehow, is often thought of as a low-wage economy, or it breaks into tiers. If we no longer have a manufacturing economy, which supposedly used to pay higher wages, then we have to decide. We have to put value on this work. We valued manufacturing at a certain level, and now it feels like we have to value these service jobs and respect them as jobs that support people and their families. 

What motivates you to engage in this kind of work, and what has inspired you to use your platform?

Kathy:  I feel like we're privileged to be able to do this work. From the beginning of my career, I've been able to talk about these kinds of questions, whether it be environmental concerns or worker's rights, and report on real people's lives. And it just feels like a privilege. As long as I can do it, I feel like, How can I not? I don't necessarily feel like I'm changing the world, but I hope that I'm helping in the conversation that might eventually make things better.

Abby: I grew up in the context of an enormous amount of privilege. I don't think the dynamics of the world we live in will change unless people actively use their privilege to dismantle privilege. I should not have more power than the next person just because of the way I was born in the world, and so I'm actively trying to model what it looks like to care about something bigger than myself. It is so weird to me that people find that surprising. I'm not the only person on earth who thinks this is a good idea. We've been so saturated in this language about individualism that people really think it's crazy to want what I think is necessary. I'm going to keep on using my platform to disassemble the privileges I was handed.

What do you hope for the future of the film and its impact on the legacy of Disney and other companies like to see?

Abby: I hope that it finds audiences in all kinds of places, but especially with young people because they have been raised in the context of this highly individualistic idea of what people are supposed to think about society. I think it's really been a kind of crime against them to raise them with this ideology. I hope that it gets seen really broadly among young people, and it triggers conversations about things like how you can't just trust a company to do the right thing, they need to be watched. I hope it will get them to go on to become if they become business people, the kind of business people who understand the importance of respecting the dignity of all their workers no matter what. I want to propose a different way to think about the job of being a corporation. It really is possible to do it otherwise.

Kathy: Abby, what do you mean when you say individualistic? What are you really talking about?

Abby: I mean that, for instance, in the gig economy, there's this presumption that everybody hustles and everybody hustles as much as they can, and if they don't get ahead it's because they're not hustling enough. It locates all of the responsibility for difficulty, impoverishment, burnout, health problems, and all the things that come with the gig economy on the individual person, rather than on the fact that it's structured in a way that privileges the company over the individual. So when they're told that it's just a dog-eat-dog world, you don't reach out a hand to help someone else, because you can't spare that time. That is just nonsense. We need to reawaken this idea that people live in collectives. It's silly to think that they don't. My God, what happens when a person is born? If we were all individuals, there would be nobody standing in the labor room with us. Obviously, we all need each other from the moment we're born until the end. I mean, who's going to carry me out when I die? So the idea we just come fully formed and no one shares responsibility for each other is a really impoverishing idea.

Kathy: It's like the notion of public is like a bad word as opposed to a good word. That's why you don't want to pay your taxes because somebody might take advantage of it. Instead of saying we're all doing it together, public schools, public parks, public transportation, all these things that would benefit all of us are somehow no longer worth the effort, or so it seems. And it trickles down that notion that we're all in it for ourselves.

Abby: They have this notion in economics and business schools of what they call the Tragedy of The Commons. It's sort of like this widely accepted idea that if you have a common space that everybody can use, they'll eventually destroy it because people will misuse it and it'll deteriorate. And it's just a given. It's just one of those things they teach you, like the sky is blue and the sun comes up every morning, this is the thing that happens. That's actually not always true, and it's all about the nature of the commons, the nature of the people, and the way they understand themselves as relates to a community. But I do think that in a major way, we educate people to become terrible capitalists because of the things we propose as just givens when we can reimagine how to do it. 

Is there anything else you would like to add?

Abby: Because of the nature of the company that I wanted to talk about, the film didn’t have a chance to get very widely seen. I hope that people watch it in schools as much as possible. It’s so ironic to me that the trouble at Disney is about a lack of imagination. This word that they use all the time to describe what they do. We need our imaginations to be reignited about how it can be if we work together. 

Kathy: I think the film has a lot of life left in it, and that it should still be seen by as many people as possible and l talked about. As much as it is a film about Disney, it’s also a film about what’s going on in our country as a whole. 

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