Cynthia “Cyn” Carranza meticulously scavenged for a shady parking spot in the car she called home.

The overnight custodian at Disneyland has to sleep during the day - a difficulty for anyone, let alone when you’re living in your car with two dogs. Ms Carranza says she makes $20.65 an hour (about £15.99) at the park but last summer, she couldn’t afford rent in this Southern California city where the average apartment can run more than $2,000 (about £1,550) a month.

Ms Carranza, like others who work at the park, detailed to the BBC the financial hardships that come with working at what’s supposed to be the “Happiest Place on Earth”. About 10,000 union workers at Disneyland - the first of 12 parks created around the globe - are threatening to strike over the wages and what they say are retaliatory anti-union practices.

Hundreds of workers protested outside the park this week, with an array of signs and pins showing Mickey Mouse’s gloved fist in defiance.

“Mickey would want fair pay,” workers chanted outside Disneyland near the park’s gates.

They voted almost unanimously to authorise strike action on Friday, just days before union contract negotiations for workers are set to resume.

  • DessertStorms
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    2 months ago

    going to a grocery store that is not fully stocked and only the self-checkouts are open because the pay is so low no one can afford to work is more than normal now in the US

    Look at the upside - easier to shoplift.

    On a more serious note though, this is all a feature, not a bug. As the meme goes - everything they threatened would eventually happen under communism is already happening under capitalism. At it will never get better until capitalism is abolished and a hierarchy free, horizontal society is built on its ashes.