Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. I'm Jason
Speaker 1: Kelly and I'm Carol Master. Welcome to the Bloomberg Business
Speaker 1: Week Extra A. It's a weekly podcast bringing you an
Speaker 1: interview you probably won't hear anywhere else. And this next
Speaker 1: guest she is someone we've talked to before. She's talked
Speaker 1: a lot about closing the wealth gap, and she recently
Speaker 1: gave a Ted talk earlier this month. It's all about
Speaker 1: really talking to corporations to offer respect, dignity, and a
Speaker 1: living wage to everyone who works for them, starting with
Speaker 1: the company that bears her name, Abigail Disney. She's a
Speaker 1: documentary filmmaker at Fork Films. She talked to us about
Speaker 1: a worker first era that she hopes is dawning. I
Speaker 1: think there needs to be a kind of a mindset
Speaker 1: reset um because I think that most people running companies
Speaker 1: right now, we're in business school maybe twenty five weeks.
Speaker 1: They're only doing what they were sort of taught to do,
Speaker 1: which is to maximize shareholder values, please every penny out
Speaker 1: of the structure of the company me that they possibly could,
Speaker 1: and that has squeezed workers dramatically. It's so interesting to
Speaker 1: watch right now as we talk about, for instance, I
Speaker 1: just heard a piece today about who's the front line worker?
Speaker 1: When we get the textine, who do we include a
Speaker 1: the front line worker? And they were saying, of course,
Speaker 1: the people who clean the floors, the people who clean
Speaker 1: up the rooms when the people leave hospitals are front
Speaker 1: line workers because they're just as important as the doctors
Speaker 1: in the nurses. So, you know, we have for a
Speaker 1: long time kind of pretended as though those were sort
Speaker 1: of nameless, faceless, interchangeable people who didn't really deserve a
Speaker 1: livable wage. We need to completely reset our sensibilities about that.
Speaker 1: If we're not willing to clean the toilets ourselves, but
Speaker 1: someone who's got to do it for us, and we
Speaker 1: can't run a business with us. And so where does
Speaker 1: this conversation not just start, Abigail, but where does it
Speaker 1: need to continue? Because I feel like there's more and
Speaker 1: more lip service being paid to this. What does action
Speaker 1: look like? Yeah, that's really the that's the question of
Speaker 1: all questions. I hope and pray um and I'm putting
Speaker 1: a lot of faith in the basic goodness of the
Speaker 1: people who run companies and the CEOs and the board members.
Speaker 1: I am hoping that if you appeal enough to their
Speaker 1: consciences that they will start to feel a discomfort with
Speaker 1: the way things are because the clear, clear, factive matter
Speaker 1: is right now, what we do is not more leaky well,
Speaker 1: And you know, it is interesting because I do think
Speaker 1: there are a lot of CEOs that we have talked
Speaker 1: to that seem to be more understanding of their employee
Speaker 1: base and more sympathetic to the plights of those that
Speaker 1: are just barely you know, getting by at this point.
Speaker 1: But I do wonder as long as there is still
Speaker 1: kind of news organizations like ours that you know, track
Speaker 1: companies and we watch those quarterly earnings, and there's investors
Speaker 1: in the marketplace, activists or others like yourself, you know,
Speaker 1: who will put pressure on companies, um activists in other
Speaker 1: ways to make sure that they can financially, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of do as much as they can. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know how does it really get much better,
Speaker 1: especially when you look at the gaps sometimes between what
Speaker 1: a CEO has made and what kind of the bulk
Speaker 1: of workers are paid at companies right right, and that
Speaker 1: you know that is that is such a great temperature
Speaker 1: games a barometer of of what's going on in the
Speaker 1: company because I frankly feel like if I'm taking home,
Speaker 1: you know, many thousands of times what my medium worker takes,
Speaker 1: I am going to have a hard time sleeping at night.
Speaker 1: If I also know, at the same time I'm profitable
Speaker 1: and many of my workers can't put food on the table,
Speaker 1: there's something should go off in a person's heart and mind,
Speaker 1: the conscience, and so you know, what I'm talking about
Speaker 1: is a little bit of gushy touched, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of lu lu thing, which is a mindset shift because actually,
Speaker 1: if you look over the last fifty years what changed
Speaker 1: in American business, most of it wasn't policy. Most of
Speaker 1: it was mindset shifting and norms changing. And so you know,
Speaker 1: in in nine two, it became legal, for instance, to
Speaker 1: make a share buy back um because up until that
Speaker 1: point it was considered totally unethical. Worker first, Abigail. In
Speaker 1: some ways it is a holistic idea. In many ways
Speaker 1: it is about just fear treatment. But it really and
Speaker 1: I want to take us back to something we talked
Speaker 1: about a little bit before we went to some news.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is ultimately about sharing compensation and really
Speaker 1: sort of driving that deeper into the company. This is doable.
Speaker 1: It is totally doable. I mean, you know, we're Disney
Speaker 1: is a totally different place this year than it was
Speaker 1: last year. But but let's look at it from last year.
Speaker 1: It made eleven and a half billion dollars of share
Speaker 1: buy backs in and unless people still not consistently able
Speaker 1: to put food on the table, was completely possible without
Speaker 1: affecting their profitability. It would have affected the enormity of profits,
Speaker 1: but it wouldn't have caused them to be unprofitable. To
Speaker 1: ensure that some of those profits were shared with the
Speaker 1: people who caused them to happen. You know, if the
Speaker 1: janitor is not making that sidewalk absolutely clean, then Disney
Speaker 1: isn't Disney. They give They bring value to the company,
Speaker 1: no matter how lonely you might think their job is.
Speaker 1: So why aren't more companies doing this and the go ahead?
Speaker 1: I think that the shareholder crimacy story was a story
Speaker 1: that took hold so quickly and so absolutely in in
Speaker 1: part because I think governments UM in the eighties and
Speaker 1: the nineties, both Quentin and and Reagan absorbed this idea
Speaker 1: that the that the Cheryl the premacy story and the
Speaker 1: kind of let business first UM way of understanding politics
Speaker 1: and life, um was just absorbed with such unanimity that
Speaker 1: I think we've forgot to question and remember that things
Speaker 1: did not always work that way. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: it's sometimes it happens that you forget that you're thinking
Speaker 1: of an orthodoxy when you think of things and not
Speaker 1: totally looking at all the options. So I think it's
Speaker 1: a lack of imagination. Frankly, well and and Abigail, you know,
Speaker 1: one might argue, I might argue in fact that candidly,
Speaker 1: just doing it by the numbers is easier, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. It's like, if you've got this goal
Speaker 1: of like the only way you're measured is by your
Speaker 1: share price or your body online, your EPs, that's easy.
Speaker 1: To measure someone's health and well being and happiness that's
Speaker 1: harder to do in in many ways, it's harder, right, right, right?
Speaker 1: And isn't it interesting? I mean because it isn't Disney
Speaker 1: in the business of someone's happiness? Um, so it should
Speaker 1: be something they're they're they're paying attention to. And the
Speaker 1: irony of what's going on with workers there is really
Speaker 1: hitting I think their customer base really hard. That is
Speaker 1: not a brand that will live forever unless they really
Speaker 1: pay attention to what is eloding there when they treat
Speaker 1: the workers the way they do. So, you know, Notlton
Speaker 1: Freedmen came in nice and seveny he said what he
Speaker 1: said people just uh absorbed, almost without question. And one
Speaker 1: of the things he was saying in in that, in
Speaker 1: that piece and in all that he taught us afterwards,
Speaker 1: was if it can't be measured, it doesn't matter. And
Speaker 1: that was I think maybe one of the most fatal
Speaker 1: blows to the corporate imagination because and and Disney such
Speaker 1: a great company, look at that for because everything that
Speaker 1: makes them profitable is an ineffable paying off the imagination.
Speaker 1: It can't be measured by nature, and so you cannot
Speaker 1: wrestle everything into a mathematical equation. And and that's business
Speaker 1: has to make sense things. And that was Abigail Disney,
Speaker 1: documentary filmmaker at Fork Films. She's been a loud voice
Speaker 1: of patriotic millionaire. She's got some takes, Carol, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: She certainly does. You've been listening to Blueberg Business Week Extra.
Speaker 1: I'm Jason Kelly and I'm Carol Master. This is Bomber