Hollywood’s Year of Labor Spills Over to Universal Studios Theme Park

As millions of families and gamers have poured in to Universal Studios Hollywood this year to check out the new Super Nintendo World, Drew Palacio has played a vital role in making the theme park magic happen.

Palacio joined Universal Studios Hollywood in 2019 as a member of its special projects division and helped develop the park’s new top attraction, “Mario Kart: Bowser’s Challenge,” working with the team that ensured the ride met safety standards. He now works day-to-day as an operator on the ride.

Like thousands of his USH co-workers and millions of others across California, Palacio has seen his wages fall behind the rising cost of living in the state, a problem compounded by a 23-mile commute five days a week to the Universal lot from Santa Clarita, where he lives with his family.

“There are days where I skip meals because I’m trying to save money for gas, which just keeps getting more expensive,” Palacio said. “I’m also helping my folks pay the rent, so all of my paycheck goes straight to covering expenses.”

Palacio is far from alone at USH. After Universal Pictures shut down along with the rest of the entertainment industry from its first double strike since 1960, employees at the adjacent theme park organized to demand better wages. While that fight isn’t over, many of the employees have already secured significant gains.

A recently released report from the UCLA Labor Center underscored the depth of the Universal Studios Hollywood workers’ financial struggles. The center, which surveyed 1,330 employees at the park represented by theme park workers’ union IATSE Local B-192 and hospitality union Unite Here Local 11, yielded dozens of anecdotes from ride operators, food stand attendees, cooks, tour guides, and other employees who keep the park running.

“Across the board, we were told from employees about how the pandemic hurt them financially and how the pay they’ve gotten since Universal Studios reopened hasn’t been enough to allow them to fully recover, even though the tourism industry as a whole has seen a significant rebound since 2020,” said Victor Narro, the project director and UCLA labor professor.

That tourism rebound can be seen in the earnings reports for Universal’s parent company, Comcast. In the first quarter of 2023, Comcast reported adjusted EBITDA for Universal’s theme parks division of $658 million, a 46% increase year-over-year, which was primarily attributed to the opening of Super Nintendo World.

The fourth quarter is also expected be a strong one for Universal’s theme parks thanks to Halloween Horror Nights, the wildly popular seasonal event held on 40 weekend nights throughout September and October. This year it features mazes based on the hit Blumhouse movie “M3GAN” and the hit video game/HBO series “The Last of Us.” With last year’s attendance for USH reaching 8.4 million, 2023’s annual attendance is likely to reach or exceed the pre-pandemic high of 9.15 million visitors set in 2019.

But UCLA’s report paints a picture of a workforce at USH that hasn’t seen the benefits of that resurgence in business.

Of the 1,330 employees who responded to UCLA’s survey, 67% said that they don’t make enough to cover basic expenses. This includes 46% of those surveyed who started working at USH in 2003 or earlier. The average hourly rate for USH employees is $17.65, with roughly three-fourths of IATSE B-192 employees and half of Unite Here employees making minimum wage ($15.50 in the state).

For employees with children, the burden of finding childcare options while working 40+ hours per week can be even more difficult to overcome. Half the respondents in UCLA’s survey said they had to miss at least one shift because they could not afford childcare, with 8% saying they often had to miss shifts. Currently, Universal does not offer any subsidized childcare outside of unpaid parental leave mandated by California state law.

Mandee, a barista at USH who opted not to use her last name, told TheWrap that she went from working five days a week to just two so she could spend time with her son. Her boyfriend works 50-60 hours per week at USH including overtime to make up for the time she’s not at work, she said. The couple has struggled to keep up with expenses such as a $300 electric bill racked up from air conditioning use during this summer’s heatwaves. She and her boyfriend have just enough time when they get home at night to eat, shower, and go to bed before getting up early the next day, she said.

“Right now, I make 35 cents above the minimum wage, even though I’ve worked at Universal for almost eight years,” Mandee said. “Even if I worked five days a week, all of that money would go straight to childcare, and I would not have any time to spend with my son.”

Victoria Stahl, a spokesperson for Unite Here 11, notes that during Halloween Horror Nights, which keeps the park open until 2 a.m., some employees choose to sleep in their cars at the park if they have to work until closing time and then take a morning shift at 8 a.m. the next day.

“Universal tries to avoid booking employees to do late night and morning shifts back-to-back, but sometimes that’s the only option, and the employees who have to do it just opt not to take the long commute back home for just a couple hours of sleep,” Stahl said.

The problems facing USH employees are far from unique. Due to inflation, rents in Los Angeles that are 40% higher than than the national median and stagnant wages are the catalysts that have made Los Angeles one of the hotbeds for labor action this year. Unions have enjoyed the most public support and momentum they have seen nationwide in decades.

Building on a Labor Movement

For IATSE B-192 and Unite Here 11, the key was tapping into cross-union solidarity. Nicole Miller, president of IATSE B-192, says that the start of contract negotiations with Universal in November 2022 felt the same as past contract cycles, with the union largely getting ready to talk on their own.

That began to change when B-192 began discussing their contract talks in monthly meetings with other unions that represent theme park workers, including Unite Here 11, LiUNA, and the American Guild of Variety Artists, among others.

“It became pretty clear that all the unions had the same cause with us, especially Unite Here, which had a contract with Universal that expired at the same time as ours, so why not work together?” Miller said.

Along with participating in UCLA’s survey, IATSE B-192 and Unite Here 11 began holding rallies outside the theme park in the adjacent Universal CityWalk, coordinating them with the LA Federation of Labor.

The theme park unions’ work gained even more momentum when the Writers Guild of America went on strike in May, followed by SAG-AFTRA in July. Unite Here 11 also held its own strikes against dozens of top Los Angeles hotels, with only a handful of hotels agreeing to terms with the union over the past three months.

With the Hot Labor Summer now in full effect, Miller began speaking at solidarity rallies for the two entertainment industry unions, including one held jointly by SAG-AFTRA and Unite Here 11 that saw thousands of union members march from the W Hotel in Hollywood to the nearby Netflix production offices on Sunset Boulevard. Those unions returned the favor as WGA and SAG-AFTRA members began attending B-192’s CityWalk rallies.

Of course, those rallies were not officially strikes, so many theme park employees couldn’t afford to walk off the job to attend those rallies. So B-192 and Unite Here found other ways to let people visiting Universal Studios know what they were facing.

“We’re allowed to wear pins while working at the park, so we all wore buttons demanding a fair contract over the past several months,” Palacio said. “I enjoy working at Universal, but the executives in charge need to put themselves in the shoes of the employees taking the hard hits from difficult guests while maintaining the professional integrity of the company.”

For Mandee, supporting Unite Here 11’s efforts was important even as she juggled her limited hours while taking care of her son. In August, Unite Here sent a complaint to the National Labor Relations Board accusing employers at the Sheraton Universal adjacent to Universal Studios of threatening striking immigrant workers at the hotel with arrests and firings if they continued to stage picket lines. Mandee joined her union’s picket line in solidarity.

“I come from a union family,” she said. “My grandparents were part of the grocery workers’ union and I saw them get actively involved in labor as a kid, so getting involved with UH11 was something I knew I had to do.”

Those efforts ended up bearing fruit, as Miller noticed a change in negotiations between Universal and B-192 during the summer.

“As we continued doing these actions, we started to see Universal offer more and more,” she said. “It was becoming clear that the usual wage increases they offered weren’t going to be good enough.”

Earlier this month, USH employees organized under IATSE B-192 ratified a memorandum of agreement that would see the theme park provide hourly rate increases across the board, with a suite of further rate increases for employees who have worked at the theme park for a certain amount of time.

Effective immediately, all employees will see their hourly rates raised to no less than $18/hour, meaning that the lowest-paid workers at the park will be paid more than the average for all workers on the previous contract. In addition, workers who have worked over 1,000 hours at the park will be eligible for a raise to at $20-25/hour depending on their position.

Workers who have logged more than 3,000 hours will be eligible for further pay raises, and all employees will see a 27% wage increase in 2025. In addition, all employees will receive checks to reflect their higher pay retroactive to Jan. 31, the starting date for the new contract.

When reached for comment, a spokesperson for Universal Parks said in a statement that the company was “proud of the agreement we reached with IATSE Local B-192 which included historic wages and expanded benefits.”

The statement noted that park workers had “overwhelmingly approved the agreement, and we believe it will make a meaningful difference for them.” The company said it would “remain ready to continue negotiations so that we can reach a fair contract for the employees covered by that agreement.”

While those talks continue, the push for better wages for theme park workers isn’t confined to Universal. Last week, the California Supreme Court turned down a request to hear an appeal from Disney on Measure L, a local initiative passed in 2018 by voters in Anaheim requiring companies that received tax rebates from the city to raise their minimum wage to $15/hour.

This means that workers at Disneyland will soon see their pay go up and will also receive retroactive payments for the pay owed to them over the past five years since Measure L went into effect.

Narro believes the recent developments show how theme park workers are leveraging the new wave of labor awareness to ensure they get a piece of the pie as California’s tourism business continues its brisk post-pandemic recovery.

“The affordability crisis in this state has helped so many people in unions across different sectors realize how much they have in common, and how important it is that they demand together that a piece of the record profits these companies are enjoying be reserved for them,” he said.

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