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Disney to layoff about 32 000 workers in first half of 2021

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Walt Disney Co said on Wednesday it would layoff 32 000 workers, primarily at its theme parks, an increase from the 28 000 it announced in September as the company struggles with limited customers due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The layoffs will be in the first half of 2021, the company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Earlier this month, Disney said it was furloughing additional workers from its theme park in Southern California due to uncertainty over when the state would allow parks to reopen. Disney’s theme parks in Florida and those outside the United States reopened earlier this year without seeing new major coronavirus outbreaks but with strict social distancing, testing and mask use.

Disneyland Paris was forced to close again late last month when France imposed a new lockdown to fight a second wave of coronavirus cases.

The company’s theme parks in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Tokyo remain open.

Disney did not respond to a Reuters request for comment on whether the 28 000 layoffs announced earlier were included in the latest figure, but a spokesperson for the company confirmed to Variety that the figure includes the previously announced number.

Officials in California, home to Walt Disney Co’s Disneyland, on Tuesday pushed the reopening of large theme parks months down the road, drawing outrage from the industry, which predicted the loss of thousands more jobs.

California closes all theme parks with a capacity of more than 15 000
In October, California Health Secretary Mark Ghaly said theme parks with a capacity of more than 15 000 visitors must wait to resume business until a county’s COVID-19 risk level drops to the lowest tier of “minimal” spread.

Under California’s four-tier scheme, the lowest tier means daily cases of the coronavirus must number less than one per 100 000.

The decision affected not just Disneyland but Comcast Corp’s Universal Studios, Legoland and Knott’s Berry Farm, which all closed down in mid-March.

“These State guidelines will keep us shuttered for the foreseeable future,” said Ken Potrock, Disneyland resort’s president.

Kurt Stocks, president of Legoland California, said the state’s actions so far “have cost tens of thousands of jobs across the industry, and today’s announcement will all but confirm that thousands more will be lost.”

Disneyland is the only Disney park that remains closed amid the pandemic. The company has reopened resorts in Florida, China, Hong Kong and Tokyo with attendance limits and other safeguards.

Ghaly acknowledged that a reopening date for Disneyland, in Orange County, could be far off. Most Southern California counties are stuck in the top two tiers.

“I don’t know when Orange County will enter the yellow (minimal) tier,” Ghaly told a news briefing. “We do believe that it is possible. It will require a lot of work, a lot of vigilance,” he said, citing strict social distancing, testing and mask use by the general public.

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