California: Disney, a world famous entertainment giant on Tuesday announced that it is going to lay off 28,000 theme park jobs in the United States in the wake of COVID19 pandemic impact. The company announced on Tuesday that it would lay off employees in most of America’s theme parks in view of the long-term impact of the corona epidemic.
In this regard, Disney Parks’ chairman Josh D’Amaro said the decision was “very painful”. But with the business severely affected by COVID19, it is the only possible option in an environment of uncertainty such as compulsions of social distance law, minimal staff work and prolonged epidemic.
The company said it would lay off about 28,000 of its theme park employees, or about a quarter of its workforce. Disney’s theme parks in California and Florida alone employed about 1,10,000 employees before the epidemic. Now after the announcement of layoffs under the new policy, this number of employees will be close to 82 thousand.
D’Amaro said in a statement that there is currently no hope of lifting the ban in California to allow Disneyland to reopen, so the decision to lay off had to be made. Walt Disney World was partially reopened in Florida in mid-July.
However, due to Coronavirus during this period, very few tourists arrived there. According to media reports, Disney will now also begin negotiations with the unions representing the employees. According to Johns Hopkins University, there have been 7,180,411 cases of corona in the US so far and 2,05,774 people have died. America is the most affected country by the epidemic.
