COVID-19: Global Layoff Bulletin: April 20, 2020
Posted on 04/20/2020
Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company plans to save US$ 500 million per month by furloughing more than 100,000 employees. In the last three months of 2019, Disney generated US$ 1.4 billion in operating income for its parks, “experiences”, and products.
On another note, Disney’s streaming platform – Disney Plus – gained up around 50 million subscribers in five months since it was publicly launched.
Abigail Disney outraged by $1.5 billion executive bonuses amid massive Orlando layoffs
While theme park closures
are furloughing so many Central Florida workers that the state has had to find new ways to enter them all for unemployment benefits,
the Walt Disney Company has already awarded $1.5 billion in bonuses to its executives.
Abigail Disney isn’t having it.
“WHAT THE ACTUAL F***?????” she tweeted on Tuesday, and she was just getting started.
Disney, who does not work for the corporation, also expressed her outrage at recent decisions made by the company on a thread Wednesday
by Bloomberg business podcaster Lisa Abramowicz –
which shared a Financial Times article titled, “Disney stops paying 100,000 workers to save $500m a month.”
“Disney stops paying 100,000 workers, roughly half its workforce, even as it protects executive bonus schemes and a $1.5 billion dividend payment due in July,”
wrote Abramowicz in her tweet.
Abigail Disney,
the granddaughter of Walt Disney’s brother, Roy Disney, shared the post,
adding,
“OK, I’ve been holding my tongue on the theory that a pandemic is no time to be calling people out on anything other than failing us in a public health sense. I thought it might be a moment for peace and reconciliation.”
ViacomCBS
Media behemoth ViacomCBS Inc. eliminated a large number of contract positions, these include freelance and project-based employees mostly in media production.
24 Hour Fitness
San Ramon, California-based 24 Hour Fitness is a gym chain. The fitness chain is dealing with a crush load of debt, while the company is under lockdown due to the coronavirus. 24 Hour Fitness hired Lazard and the law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges to weigh options, which includes a bankruptcy. 24 Hour Fitness is owned by AEA Investors, when the investor got it through a US$ 1.8 billion deal in 2014 from sellers Fitness Capital Partners and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. According to ratings agency Moody’s, the fitness chain had US$ 1.5 billion in sales and has less than US$ 1 million in cash. 24 Hour Fitness has a US$ 837 million term loan with a “springing maturity” in March 2022 and US$ 500 million in unsecured notes maturing in June 2022.
Carta
Carta laid off 161 employees, or roughly 16% of its workforce. Carta is a startup that manages employee equity for other startups.
IPC Studio
Los Angeles-based IPC Studio Inc. closed its jeans manufacturing plant in South Los Angeles and terminated 124 employees. IPC Studio’s clients were well-known brands, including Joes Jeans, Hudson Jeans, and Rag & Bone.SWFI
https://www.swfinstitute.org/news/79003/swfi-daily-layoffs-briefing-april-20-2020