Walt Disney has agreed to pay $43.3 million to settle a lawsuit alleging its female workers in California earned $150 million less than their male counterparts over an eight-year period, lawyers for the plaintiffs said in a statement Monday.
As part of the settlement, Disney agreed to retain a labor economist for three years to analyze pay equity among full-time, non-union California employees below the level of vice president, and to resolve discrepancies, three law firms representing the plaintiffs said.
The lawsuit was filed by LaRonda Rasmussen in 2019, after learning that six men with the same job title were making more than her, including one man with a few years less experience, who was making $20,000 a year more than her.
9,000 current and former employees of the entertainment company eventually joined the suit. Disney tried to stop the class action, but a judge ruled last December that it could continue, said Andrus Anderson, one of the firm’s attorneys at the time.
“I highly recommend Ms. Rasmussen and the women who filed this discrimination case against Disney, one of the largest entertainment companies in the world. They put their jobs on the line to increase pay inequality at Disney,” Lori Andrus, a partner at Andrus Anderson, said in a statement Monday.
“We have always been committed to paying our employees fairly and have demonstrated that commitment throughout this case, and we are pleased to have resolved this matter,” a Disney spokeswoman told Reuters.
The case was also supported by an analysis of Disney’s labor data from April 2015 to December 2022 which found that female Disney employees were paid approximately 2% less than their male counterparts. The analysis was done by David Neumark, a professor at the University of California Irvine and a labor economist.
The settlement agreement, which was filed in California state court, still needs to be approved by a judge, according to lawyers.
-Nilutpal Timsina and Gnaneshwar Rajan, Reuters
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