Disney firefighters are distraught, choked up by 'disturbing' move from Ron DeSantis to strip them of free park passes
stopthatgirl7@kbin.social to 
fortune.com
Firefighters confronted DeSantis' governing board on Wednesday. “The removal of this benefit takes away, for some, their entire reason for working here."
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It looks like this is a $1,400 per year perk. That's really expensive if you're considering buying it out of pocket, but not a huge amount in terms of salary. This should never be a make it or break it kind of benefit. Negotiate to make an extra $1,400 next year and buy it out of your own pocket.
Edit: just adding that I am incredibly anti-DeSantis, but this is a nothing burger.
No I don't think their perk is $1400. If it is a Cast Member Silver Pass, they can get three people plus themselves in to any park every day of the year for free. If you have family come over it's more than $100 per person per day. These tickets always include a Park Hopper option, adding another $40-50 in cost. If you use this perk 20 times per year for 3+1 people (which is definitely within reason), that would be more than $8000 and up to $12000 if you include the Park Hopper option. Maybe you could get that cheaper with season passes, but those are tied to an individual. $1400 is way, way off .
Considering this quote from the article; 'Firefighter Aaron Clark, whose father was also a district firefighter, choked up as he recounted how growing up his dad took him to the parks using the passes and how he now does the same thing with his three daughters.' I think you're spot on. They also mention discounts in the park which was a part of a cast member badge. When I worked in the parks I could have sworn they also had the blue ID (as opposed to green for 3rd party vendor), but that was a while ago.
They also bought 400 passes for all of the RCID employees, so they probably got a significant discount. Also considering Disney pays 86% of the taxes that fund RCID, it might have been cheaper to give away the passes and keep the tax money. Even at $10k a person (an absurdly high estimate), $4 million is a drop in the Disney bucket.
I googled it before posting my comment. It can't be that off.
Yep, that's the danger of Googling something without a proper background. There is a season pass that the general public can buy, but it is quite different from the Cast Member version. https://forums.wdwmagic.com/threads/cm-silver-pass-question.906317/ versus https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/passholder-program/benefits-of-becoming-a-passholder/
"I did a whole 2 minutes of research, I can't possibly be wrong"
In addition to the other person who replied to you, I also wanted to point out that the firefighters did not say they were only firefighters for that Disney pass perk, just that it was the main reason they worked in that specific location. If they didn't get that perk, I'm sure some of them have other stations closer to their home or would prefer to move somewhere less crowded or with better traffic on their daily commute. The Disney to I Drive area of Orlando is traffic/tourist hell. I sure as hell wouldn't want to work there without some special benefits.
It’s clear that you don’t understand Disney Adults. Even if it were just a $1,400 per year perk, the people that work there solely because of the perk that allows them to go to Disney properties whenever they want will have just lost their incentive. It’s entirely likely that some of these people have willingly turned down positions at fire departments or in the industries that require their experience for the explicit reason that they enjoy the access to disney their job provides. Without that, there would be little incentive to stay even if they could get a $1400 bonus.