Quote:
Originally Posted by blueash
Disney recently furloughed about 100,000 salaried employees which saves the corporation abt $500,000,000 [corrected] per month. They are continuing to cover health insurance. They wrote to their employees to be sure to apply for the federal program giving them $600/wk in extra unemployment and Florida benefits of $275/wk.
Here is the reason for my post. In July Disney is scheduled to pay it shareholders $1,500,000,000 in dividends. That would cover 3 months of salary to its employees and save you the taxpayer of FL and USA from assuming the cost. If the 500,000,000 [corrected] per month is the savings to Disney, that would also then include Disney's employer contribution to Social Security, Medicare, and the state Unemployment Fund. So these programs are being non-funded by paying stockholders instead of workers.
It seems that the shareholders who invest expecting a share of the profit of the corporation would be expected to take a hit when the corporation does poorly. Why isn't Disney cancelling the July dividend and instead using that money to pay its workers.
Carnival cruise has cancelled its dividend. It can be done. |
Really, you don't think the shareholders are taking a hit? Apparently you haven't checked the stock price of Disney lately. The dividend will help buffer the huge hit in the stock price by a little bit, but there is still plenty of pain. And do you not expect a corporation to furlough employees when they are forced to close down all operations by an event that was not of their making? At least the employees were furloughed and not outright laid off like lots of companies have done to employees. Disney could have laid off employees and then taken advantage of the daily increasing unemployment rate to rehire workers at cheaper wages.
Bottom line, corporations are owned by their shareholders. Corporations are in business to maximize the returns of the people who invest in and own the corporation. If the corporation goes bankrupt, those same shareholders are at the bottom of the pecking order when the company is liquidated.
It's called capitalism, not socialism.