Returning Disney CEO Bob Iger announces plans for sweeping overhauls to Disney’s business.
I’m an employee of Disney. This blog post is about the way in which my work and my life are being changed.
For the first two years of my employment, I was a part of the Disney team that was designing and promoting the Disney-produced ABC television movie, “The Love Bug.” ABC did not pay me in any way for writing this movie. The movie was a great success, and the film industry is very conservative about compensation and benefits, so I was pretty sure the Disney executives who were pitching the idea of a television movie to the ABC executives would not want any type of payment. However, once the ABC executives saw how well the TV movie did and that the success turned into a film, they offered me a sizable contract. I’m sure the ABC executives could afford it, but they felt it was important to at least offer me something if the TV movie was a success. I accepted the offer, and in all the years since, I have not been paid anything for writing and producing the TV movie.
This is an issue that is very familiar to any employee who has been with the company for more than a few years. The CEO does not pay employees for their work. In most large companies, an employee’s contract specifies a salary, either in the form of a lump-sum payment or regularly-paid salary, but the CEO does not pay the employee. In essence, a company pays an employee by hiring them. After an employee is hired, the company can then make decisions about what to pay the employee and how to structure their compensation package.
The problem with this scenario is that once an employee is hired, the employee has all the power to bargain for their compensation package. The employee may say, “Hey, I would like that much more if I could be compensated for half of my work. Pay me X and I’ll just work on
