WDWIP.com - Article

When Disney recruiters went to Kenya, touting a 12-month program at Walt Disney World in which Africans could be cultural ambassadors for their countries while taking courses to advance their careers, Robert Wanjohi was intrigued.

Their message: Live, learn and earn at the Happiest Place on Earth.

But Wanjohi, a safari guide from Lake Nakuru in Kenya, said the reality was far different from the promises.

Instead of working 40 hours a week or more, he only worked about six hours a day. And the classes the recruiters promised, from languages to computer training, either weren't offered or conflicted with his job as a driver at Kilimanjaro Safaris in Animal Kingdom, Wanjohi said.

Wanjohi, 35, who supports his wife and 8-year-old daughter, said that after 11 months here, he saved just $1,000 -- less than half what he would have saved in Kenya.

"I feel like a year that has been wasted," he said. "I would say that, for most of us, what we are told when we are recruited is totally different from what we actually get here."

He is among about 1,500 international workers who come to Walt Disney World every year, many of them under a temporary work visa that Congress created especially for Disney a decade ago. The internationals represent a small but growing segment of the resort's labor force.

The international program -- one of the largest of its kind in the United States -- gets praise from many participants who say their experience was a rewarding immersion into an icon of American business. But others, such as Wanjohi, tell a very different story.

Several African workers interviewed by the Sentinel expressed anger and disillusionment about their stay at Walt Disney World and said recruiters misled them about what they could expect in Orlando, from the type of job they would be doing to their educational opportunities and work hours.

Disney says such complaints are isolated and that recruiters take great pains to stress the program is about cultural exchange, not making money.

"We are very proud of this program," Walt Disney World spokesman Diane Ledder said. "In any hiring initiative, you're always going to have a small percentage of individuals who did not have a good time."

For a global concern like Disney, tapping foreign workers makes sense on several levels.

Such workers add authenticity to attractions such as the recently opened Animal Kingdom Lodge and the international pavilions at Epcot; they can communicate with the resort's diverse visitors; and they provide a low-cost, captive labor force at a time when the resort faces huge hourly staffing needs and mounting pressures to control costs.

International workers have been a fixture at Walt Disney World since Epcot opened in 1982 as a showcase of world cultures. Disney recruited several dozen temporary workers from France, Germany, England and elsewhere to be cultural ambassadors in the pavilions around Epcot's World Showcase.

Within a few years, Disney's international work force swelled to about 700 employees. Most worked under a temporary work visa called J-1.

But by the late 1980s the J-1 visa was attracting the scrutiny of the General Accounting Office because of abuses by some companies, though not by Disney.

Fearing Congress would revoke the J-1 program, Disney intensively lobbied for a new visa that would more clearly support its program. The result was Q-1, aptly dubbed the "Disney visa." It was among a slew of new temporary visas added to the Immigration Act of 1990.

The visa allowed companies to hire temporary foreign workers for unskilled positions where they are sharing their history, culture and traditions of their home country. They must work in a program approved by the attorney general.

And the temporary foreign workers can't easily up and leave their jobs because their visas restrict where they can work.

"The key thing here is that these workers can't quit," said Vernon Briggs, a professor of labor economics at Cornell University and an expert on immigration policy. "That's what makes them so attractive to industry and so controversial in terms of public policy."

While many companies hire temporary international workers, few operate a program as large as Disney's.

The number of international workers at Disney World has doubled in the past decade to about 1,500. Their ranks jumped following the opening of Animal Kingdom in 1998, when Disney recruited dozens of Africans and Asians to staff its fourth theme park. Disney further expanded its international hiring during the 15-month Millennium celebration at Epcot.

To accommodate their growing numbers, Disney last year expanded the dormitory-style housing it provides for internationals and college students.

Though they still make up a small share of the resort's overall employment of 56,000, they are nevertheless a growing and visible presence at Disney World.

"Many of our guests who come here don't speak English, so to have someone who can speak their language and their culture -- we get guest compliments on that," said Wendy Crudele, director of hiring for Walt Disney World.

Duncan Dickson, a professor of guest service management at the University of Central Florida, is a former Disney executive who helped create the Q-1 visa.

"It's probably one of the best exchange programs in the world," Dickson said. "Disney can be very proud of what they created."

But the program is not drawing accolades from Wanjohi and some of his African colleagues.

Their chief complaint: They weren't able to work nearly as many hours as recruiters promised.

It's a particularly key issue for those coming from impoverished African nations, with little or no means of financial support.

Once they arrive in Orlando, international workers, who are typically paid $6.25 an hour, must live on a very tight budget.

From their pay, Disney deducts about $65 a week for rent in dormitory- style housing. Money is also taken out for their air fare, which can cost more than $2,000.

Because of their tight budgets, many internationals struggle to make ends meet, said Carol Hatch, a union steward who works at Epcot.

"We used to take a collection to give these kids food money because they were living on Snickers bars; they'd have no idea," Hatch said. "If these kids get sick and they can't work, they are in a hole."

Disney union leaders say they are often powerless to assist international workers because most aren't represented by the union and are unaware of their rights in this country. Johnson Olenkukuu, a Kenyan safari guide who worked at Animal Kingdom until March, said Disney recruiters misled him about his hours of work and his job in Orlando.

Olenkukuu said he was hired as a safari guide at Animal Kingdom but instead spent his first six months working at the park's Wildlife Express train station.

"I was so low at work," said Olenkukuu, 27. "I wasted my whole time. Leaving my good work back home and coming to Disney where I'm not even appreciated. People made false promises to me."

And Hazel Mathibela of South Africa said her experience at Disney World was no Cinderella story. Six months after she became a greeter at Animal Kingdom, a tourist in a motorized wheelchair collided into Mathibela, tearing a ligament in her ankle.

She couldn't work and she had to rely on the charity of roommates to buy and cook her meals.

After missing more than a week of work because of her injury, Mathibela, 29, says she had to return to her job before she was fully recuperated because she had no money and feared losing her job.

She said managers were insensitive to her injury and reneged on a promise to deduct her rent as compensation for her lost wages.

"Disney was supposed to treat me better than they did," Mathibela said.

Geoffrey Ntaiya, a safari driver at Animal Kingdom last year, said he was disappointed with the class offerings but praised the overall experience.

"It was a real eye opener," said Ntaiya of Kenya. "I like the program because at least it exposed us to different people from different backgrounds."

Disney takes great pains to ensure foreign workers know what to expect in Orlando, Ledder said. The workers sign contracts indicating that they will work a minimum of 30 hours a week and are given sample budgets for food, rent and other expenses to help calculate their expenses in advance, Ledder said.

"This is a living, learning and earning experience. It's not a get-rich-quick experience and it's not portrayed as that," Ledder said. "We have made every effort to portray this experience accurately."

Richard Verrier can be reached at 1-800-528-4637, Ext. 77936 or richard.verrier@latimes.com.

We received the following response to the Sentinel article in September of 2002 and have chosen to publish it unedited (with permission of the author):

Almost three years ago, I learned about Robert Wanjohi and the experience of a number of Disney Orlando workers recruited from impoverished nations in Africa and Asia. I witnessed Wanjohi's recruitment in his Kenya workplace firsthand in 1999. A recruitment that Diane Ledder at first denied. It took more than a year to get the story into the Orlando Sentinel and a bit longer onto your website.

I commend you for having the chutzpah to reprint the Sentinel article so prominently on your website that is normally such a "rah rah" promoter of all things mouse.

The key is IMPOVERISHED nations. I think the Disney experience is absolutely fabulous for the vast majority of you foreign workers. I'm a grandmother from Los Angeles, and would not hesitate to send my children or grandchildren to Orlando for their "year abroad" experience.

The problem came in 1998 when Disney needed "authentic" African workers and had to troll for them further afield than amongst students at "affluent" South African universities. Wanjohi doesn't (as the article states) support an 8-year-old daughter. He has a wife and THREE young daughters--the youngest was under a year old when he left for Orlando after being recruited by Disney at the safari camp where he works as a highly experienced bush guide.

Wanjohi and other mature, professional African and Asian workers at Orlando are not stupid. They are unsophisticated and easy prey for unscrupulous Disney recruiters who need to fill a quota of authentic workers. Please continue to emphasize to prospective workers that Disney is NOT a place for established family men and women to come to try to save money to support large extended families.

For Diane Ledder (a well-traveled, highly sophisticated& educated Ph.D.) to attempt to characterize their misunderstanding as a "get-rich-quick" scheme is an offensive insult to every non-white, non-rich, non-Western-educated person on the planet. The onus of vetting & qualifying suitable prospective employees in deplorably poor undeveloped countries is on Disney--not on the unsophisticated Africans & Asians they recruit in their workplaces out in the bush of Kenya or the rainforests of Thailand.

Susan Fox
Fox Safaris