SEATTLE - The Walt Disney Company, one of the biggest and most influential entertainment and media empires in the world, will have to pay millions of dollars to settle a lawsuit that has been on the legal radar since 2019.
After a settlement agreement reached on Nov. 25, Disney has agreed to pay $43 million to settle a lawsuit that it paid female employees in California less than their male counterparts in similar roles within the company for nearly eight years. That means that each woman would get around $5,000.
As CNN reported, the settlement stems from a 2019 lawsuit filed by LaRonda Rasmussen who claims she learned that six men with the same job title within the company earned more than her, including one man with several years less of experience who was earning $20,000 a year more than she did.
But throughout the process, Rasmussen was not alone. Nearly 9,000 other women, who were both former and current employees at Disney, joined the class action lawsuit. The plaintiffs' lawyers said in a statement that female employees in California earned $150 million less than their male counterparts over an eight-year period.
As part of the settlement, Disney has now agreed to retain a labor economist for three years to analyze pay equity among full-time, non-union California employees below the vice president level, as well as committing to fixing gender pay gap differences.
Since Rasmussen filed the lawsuit in 2019, Disney continued to dispute the allegations and did not admit fault. A spokesperson told CNN that Disney has "always been committed to paying our employees fairly" and added that the company has demonstrated that commitment throughout the case.
The lawsuit covered plaintiffs who worked in a broad variety of sectors at several companies under the Disney umbrella, including film and TV studios, theme parks and hotels. It also included workers at Marvel, ABC, Lucasfilm and Imagineering.
Lori Andrus, one of the plaintiff's attorneys, said that women at Disney earn, on average, 2% less than men doing roughly the same jobs, not including bonuses and other incentive plans.
For example, Rasmussen, who worked as a manager in 2017 and earned $109,958 per year, was earning less than each of the six men that held the same job title and more than $16,000 less than the lowest paid man in the same job. Five months after she complained to human resources about the pay gap, she was told the discrepancy "was not due to gender."
Disney's lawyers sought to block the class action certification for the lawsuit, arguing that its company's assets were "so numerous and varied" that different job categories were not necessarily comparable to one another.
"I strongly commend Ms. Rasmussen and the women who brought this discrimination suit against Disney, one of the largest entertainment companies in the world. They risked their careers to raise pay disparity at Disney," said Andrus in a statement.
The company said that a 2022 review of its pay policies revealed that women earned 99.4% of what men earned and that the case should not be classified as a class action lawsuit because pay is determined by hundreds of managers across several divisions of the company.
Although both parties have agreed to a settlement, the agreement still requires the approval of a judge.
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