This was a really great weekend for Marvel Studios and Disney as Avengers: Endgame opened to record numbers. Senator Bernie Sanders sees this win for Disney as the perfect opportunity to share the success with company employees.
What’s happening:
- With the massive opening weekend success of Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame, Vermont Senator, Bernie Sanders has an idea of what Disney should do with the profits.
- The Hill reported on one of Senator Sanders’ recent Twitter posts calling on Disney to share the wealth.
- On Monday, Sanders commented that Disney could direct their profits from the film to employees saying: “What would be truly heroic is if Disney used its profits from Avengers to pay all of its workers a middle class wage, instead of paying its CEO Bob Iger $65.6 million – over 1,400 times as much as the average worker at Disney makes.”
- In addition to his comments, Sanders linked to a Bloomberg article that reiterated the opening weekend success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s 22nd film.
- Sanders isn’t the only critic of Iger and his salary. The Hill points out that recently, Roy Disney’s granddaughter Abigail referred to Iger’s annual earnings as "insane" while encouraging the company distribute "some of the profits" to rank-and-file employees.
- Last week Disney took to Twitter in a lengthy post to share her opinions on how and why the company could shift some of the profits to employees.
What she’s saying:
- Abigail Disney: “There’s a point at which there’s just too much going around the top of the system into this class of people who — I’m sorry this is radical — have too much money."
Previous comments:
- This is not the first time Senator Sanders has made his brought up wage issues with Disney.
- Last year the senator visited Southern California several times to speak with union workers in Anaheim regarding wage initiatives on their ballots.
- Sanders criticized the company saying, “In the year 2018, no one in America, especially those working for a profitable corporation like Disney, should be homeless or not be able to feed their families.”
- At that time, Disney was in negotiations with unions at the Disneyland Resort.
- Senator Sanders also shared his thoughts on Disneyland’s letter to the City of Anaheim proposing they end two tax deals previously made with the resort.
- Sanders said, “Disney is so nervous that the living wage ballot initiative in Anaheim is going to pass… it would rather end some of the corporate welfare it receives from local taxpayers than pay all 30,000 of its workers decent wages.”
ICYMI:
- Avengers: Endgame box office numbers reached a whopping $1.2 billion worldwide and $357 million domestically. That domestic total is nearly $100 million more than the opening of last year’s Infinity War.