California Disney characters are unionizing decades after Florida peers. Hollywood plays a role

The character performers at Disneyland in California have said they filed a petition for union recognition. The organizing effort comes more than four decades after their peers at Disney's parks in Florida joined a union. Why now for the California character performers? A lot of it has to do with the Disneyland Resort workers’ proximity to Hollywood. Unlike in Florida where being a character often is a full-time job, many of the character performers in California have other gigs in movies and TV. When many of their Hollywood jobs dried up because of the pandemic and labor strikes, they wanted more dependable scheduling from Disney.