Abigail Disney’s blast at Disney CEO Iger’s pay won’t be frozen out by the Avengers

The Disney heiress has described Bob Iger’s $65m package as ‘insane’ and called for more resources to be directed to the firm’s low-paid workers

Abigail Disney: The heiress and filmmaker has sparked a debate over Disney CEO Bob Iger’s $65m salary package (Getty)

The current generation of strong, forthright Disney princesses could have been modelled on Abigail Disney.

Instead of cooing over the firm’s prince, Bob Iger, like the older animated heroines were expected to do, she’s picked up a sword.

The granddaughter of the company’s cofounder, Roy Disney, used it to slash at the CEO’s $65.6m (£50m) pay package over the weekend. She described it as “insane”.

The filmmaker lauded Iger as a “brilliant leader”, which he is. Disney has performed strongly on his watch. The company dominates the silver screen, and the small screen. It makes the world’s biggest movies, has the world’s most popular entertainment franchises, and even owns the self-declared “worldwide leader in sports”, ESPN.

With the deal to buy the entertainment assets of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox, Disney has positioned itself to take on streaming kingpin Netflix.

But business is a team sport, a fact that Abigail Disney has a better understanding of than the people who set Iger’s salary.

There are, she noted, just over 200,000 employees at the company that bears her name, and she has spoken to some of those struggling on the lower rungs of its salary ladder.

Their struggles prompted her to suggest that were half the bonus diverted towards them it would have no impact on Iger’s life. He would still be absurdly rich. But it could have a big impact on theirs.

In response, Disney sought to stress that much of Iger’s compensation was and is performance related, as firms in the midst of this sort of furore often do.

Thing is, there is scant evidence that such bloated remuneration packages result in better economic or corporate performance.

By contrast, there is ample evidence that paying workers more at the bottom can have a big impact on both.

Firms that have signed up for accreditation by Britain’s voluntary living wage campaign have, for example, reported an economic boost from doing so.

Workers on the wage stay in their posts longer, are less inclined to be absent, and do better work.

With her criticisms, Abigail Disney could thus be said to be acting in the best interests of the company, in which she holds shares.

Disney has pointed to it adopting $15-an-hour minimum wages and highlighted initiatives to help its low salaried staff get an education. Great. But those measures don’t undermine the validity of Abigail Disney’s attack on a “corrosive” package that is more than 1,000 times that of the median Disney employee, let alone those at the bottom.

The storm may prove shortlived, with another one brewing. It’s called Avengers: Endgame, which starts its cinematic run on Thursday and will likely deliver Disney a massive shot in the arm, both financially and in terms of the publicity it’s already generating. But the other point to note about the modern Disney princess is their staying power.

Abigail Disney is a member of the “Patriotic Millionaires”, proud “traitors to their class” who call for higher taxes for the rich, among other things. Neither the Avengers nor Frozen’s Anna and Elsa, stars of another mega-franchise and another forthcoming mega-hit, will freeze her arguments for long.