Tonight in Los Angeles, Disney plans on holding a big screening for members of the Academy and the least controversial film of the year, will actually have a picket line out front of angry people with signs reading, “Don’t vote for Disney!” And the strange part? They’ll all be Disney employees.
It turns out a group of hotel employees at Disneyland in Anaheim are unhappy about changes to their medical plan and are attempting to thwart the TOY STORY 3 Oscar campaign to raise awareness for their cause.
I don’t want to get into the politics of the situation but it has something to do with lower-paid workers who are unhappy at being forced to change to a Disney-approved healthcare plan that will cost an additional $365/month.
Since this is a movie site, we’ll stick to that side of things: could this actually hurt TOY STORY 3’s Oscar campaign? I think the union workers would like to think it would and that Disney would cave to their demands but frankly, I don’t know that AMPAS members are all that concerned either. TOY STORY 3 will surely get a nomination but will have a very, very, very hard time getting a win for Best Picture (it so far hasn’t won one critic’s group award for Best Picture) and I don’t see a protest changing that one way or another.