“Avengers: Endgame” is officially the biggest movie of all time after a record-shattering opening weekend, bringing in $350 million in domestic ticket sales and $1.2 billion globally.
And the far left’s favorite Democratic Socialist and 2020 presidential hopeful, Bernie Sanders, is calling on Disney to do something “truly heroic” with the windfall: Give it to its employees who are making a fraction of CEO Bob Iger’s more than $65 million salary.
“What would be truly heroic is if Disney used its profits from Avengers to pay all of its workers a middle class wage, instead of paying its CEO Bob Iger $65.6 million – over 1,400 times as much as the average worker at Disney makes,” Sanders tweeted Monday.
What would be truly heroic is if Disney used its profits from Avengers to pay all of its workers a middle class wage, instead of paying its CEO Bob Iger $65.6 million – over 1,400 times as much as the average worker at Disney makes. https://t.co/NrcFSk4LZc
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) April 29, 2019
This isn’t the first time Sanders has injected himself in the spread-the-wealth conversation regarding Disney’s workers, whose union cemented a $15 minimum wage last year. Sanders offered up his approval, congratulating them on Twitter.
“I applaud everyone who stood up to demand that workers at one of the wealthiest corporations in the world should have a decent standard of living” he said at the time.
Sanders’ sentiment in raising worker pay at Disney also is shared by Abigail Disney, the granddaughter of Roy Disney, who said earlier this month that Iger’s salary is “insane.” Abigail Disney also said in March that “Jesus Christ himself” isn’t worth what Iger makes.
“If your CEO salary is at the 700, 600, 500 times your median worker’s pay, there is nobody on earth — Jesus Christ himself isn’t worth 500 times his median worker’s pay,” she said at the time.
The philanthropist and member of the “Patriotic Millionaires” also spoke out against income inequality at a Fast Company event on Friday, saying Disney makes so much money it has no excuse not to give its lowest-paid employees significant pay raises as opposed to the $15 minimum wage or one-time bonuses.
“When (Iger) got his bonus last year, I did the math, and I figured out that he could have given personally, out of pocket, a 15% raise to everyone who worked at Disneyland, and still walked away with $10 million,” she said. “So there’s a point at which there’s just too much going around the top of the system into this class of people who — I’m sorry this is radical — have too much money. There is such a thing.”