Dignity isn't a privilege. It's a worker's right

Of all the characters
in all the Disney films

the one I love the most
is Jiminy Cricket from "Pinocchio."

My favorite scene in the movie

is when the blue fairy
is saying to Pinocchio,

"Always let your conscience
be your guide."

Pinocchio asks, "What are conscience?"

and Jiminy Cricket
is scandalized by the question.

"What are conscience!

What are conscience!

Conscience is that still, small voice
that people won't listen to.

That's just the trouble
with the world today."

I love the way Jiminy Cricket
is always there

with a nerdy, ethical thing

just as Pinocchio's coming up
with some kind of good plan.

I think of him as speaking
truth to puppet.

I always wondered what it was
about Jiminy Cricket

that made me love him so much

and one day it hit me.

It was because he sounds
like my grandfather.

My grandfather was
a very sweet and cuddly man,

and I loved him to the moon and back.

But I shared him with a big, wide world.

His name was Roy O. Disney,

and together with his younger
brother Walt Disney,

he came from a very humble
upbringing in Kansas

and started and ran one of the most
iconic businesses in the world.

Two things I remember the best
about going to Disneyland

with my grandfather.

The first thing was
he always gave me a stern warning

that if I ever sassed
anybody who worked there,

I was in deep doo-doo when we got home.

He said, "these people work really hard --

harder than you can imagine,

and they deserve your respect."

The other is that he never
walked by a piece of garbage,

inside of Disneyland or anywhere else,

where he didn't bend over to pick it up.

He said, "no one's too good
to pick up a piece of garbage."

In Grandpa's day,

a job at Disneyland was not a gig.

A person could expect to own a home,

raise a family,

access decent health care,

retire in some security without worrying

on just what he earned there at the park.

Mind you, Grandpa fought the unions,

and he fought them hard.

He said he didn't like to be forced

to do something
he wanted to do voluntarily.

That was rank paternalism of course
and maybe even a tiny bit of BS.

He wasn't an angel,

and everyone wasn't well
and fairly treated across the company,

something that's well-known.

But I think in his core
he had a very deep commitment

to the idea that he had a moral obligation
to every human being that worked for him.

That actually wasn't such an uncommon
attitude for CEOs of the day.

But when my grandfather died in 1971,

a new mindset was beginning to take hold

of the American and eventually
the global imagination.

Jiminy Cricket got shown the door
by economist Milton Friedman,

among others,

who popularized the idea
of shareholder primacy.

Now, shareholder primacy is a pretty
reasonable idea when you think about it.

Shareholders own the company,

shareholders want profits and growth,

so therefore you prioritize
profits and growth.

Very sensible.

But unfortunately, shareholder primacy
was an idea that became a mindset

and then that mindset jumped the rails,

and it came to fundamentally
alter everything

about the way companies
and even governments

were led and managed.

Milton Friedman's pivotal op-ed
in the "New York Times"

was followed by decades
of concerted organizing and lobbying

by business-focused activists

along with a sustained assault
on every law and regulation

that had once held businesses'
worst impulses in check.

And soon enough,

this new mindset had taken hold
across every business school

and across every sector.

Profits were to be pursued
by any means necessary,

unions were kneecapped,

taxes were slashed,

and with the same machete,

so was the safety net.

I don't need to tell you
about the inequality

that's been the result of these shifts.

We all know the story well.

The bottom line is that everything
that turns a gig into a livelihood

was stripped away from an American worker.

Job security,

paid sick days,

vacation time --

all of that went away

even as the wealthy saw their net worths
bloat to unprecedented,

and yes, unusable levels.

Although if you're Scrooge McDuck
you could change it all into gold coins

and backstroke through it.

So let me just address
the Dumbo in the room.

Yes, I am criticizing the company
that bears my family's name.

Yes, I think Disney can do better.

And I believe that many of the thousands
of magnificent people

who work at the Walt Disney Company

wish that it would do better
just as much as I do.

For almost a century,

Disney has turned a pretty profit

on the idea that families
are a kind of magic,

that love is important,

that imaginations matter.

That's why it turns
your stomach a little bit

when I tell you that Cinderella
might be sleeping in her car.

But let's be very clear:
this is not just about Disney.

This is structural and this is systemic.

No single CEO on his own is culpable

and no single company
has the wherewithal to buck this.

The analysts, the pundits,

the politicians,

the business school curricula
and the social norms

drive the shape
of the contemporary economy.

Disney is just doing
what everybody else does,

and they're not even the worst offender.

If I told you how bad it was for workers
at Amazon or McDonald's or Walmart,

or any one of a thousand other places
you've never heard of,

it's not going to hit you as viscerally
as if I tell you that 73 percent,

or three out of four of the people
who smile when you walk in,

who help you comfort that crying baby,

who maybe help you have the best
vacation you ever have,

can't consistently put food on the table.

It's supposed to be
the happiest place on earth.

And the people who work there
take incredible pride

that they pursue a higher purpose.

It's a higher purpose

that both my grandfather
and great-uncle very intentionally built

when they made it a place that honors
an interaction over a transaction.

Now, I know that a word like magic
makes you wonder

if I've taken leave of my senses.

I know it's hard to imagine
that something as ephemeral as love

can support a brand as big as Disney,

and I know that it's hard to imagine

that things as unquantifiable
as moral obligations

should have any call on us

when we seek to deliver
value to our investors.

But accounting and finance
don't run the world.

Beliefs,

mindsets --

those are what drive business ethics.

And if we're going to change
those mindsets and belief systems,

we're going to have to use the most
Disney superpower out there.

We're going to have to use
our imaginations.

You're going to have to invite
Jiminy Cricket back to the party.

Now, Jiminy Cricket might start
with some low-hanging fruit,

like, greed is not good,

like the world is not divided
into makers and takers,

and that nobody ever,

without any help,

pulled themselves up
by their own bootstraps --

if you know anything about physics
you'll understand why that is.

Jiminy might remind us that every
single person who works for us,

without exception,

whether they fill out the spreadsheets

or change the bedsheets,

deserves the respect
and dignity of living wage.

It's as simple as that.

And Jiminy might wonder
how managers and employees

could possibly have any kind
of empathy for each other

when their workplaces
have become so segregated

that it seems normal and natural

that an executive needs
an especially swanky place to park

or eat or go to the bathroom

or that an executive is too good
to pick up a piece of garbage.

We are, after all, just the one species
living together on just the one planet.

Jiminy might ask us
to question some of our dogma.

Does a CEO really need to be paid
as much or more than every other CEO

or is that just creating
a competitive dynamic

that's driving numbers
into the stratosphere?

He might wonder if boards really do know
all that they really need to know

when they don't have frontline workers
ever at their meetings.

He might ask if there's such a thing
as too much money.

Or he might wonder
if maybe we can make common cause

with consumers, with workers,

with companies, with communities,

for all of us to come together

to redefine this incredibly narrow idea

of what the purpose
of a company really is.

Jiminy would want us to remember
that nobody works in a vacuum,

that the men and women who run companies

actively cocreate the reality
we all have to share.

And just like with global warming,

we are, each of us, responsible
for the collective consequences

of our individual decisions and actions.

I believe that the most profitable
business ecosystem

in the history of the world

can do better.

I believe we can take
just a little bit off of the upside,

take a tiny bit of pressure off
the speed at which things are happening.

I believe that everything
we lose in the short-term

will more than make up for itself

in an expanded landscape of moral,
spiritual and financial prosperity.

I know what the cynics say, and it's true:

you can't eat your principles.

But you can't breathe
a basis point either,

and neither can your children.

I know I idolized my grandfather
probably too much.

He worked in very different times

and those are times
none of us want to go back to

for all kinds of good reasons.

I know there are a lot of CEOs today
who are just as well-meaning

and just as decent as my grandfather was,

but they're working at a time
with very different expectations

and much more cutthroat context.

But here's the good news.

Expectations and contexts are made

and they can be unmade, too.

There is so much to learn
from the simple integrity

of how my grandfather
understood his job as CEO.

Behind every theme park
and every stuffed animal,

a handful of principles
governed everything.

Every single person
deserves respect and dignity.

No one is too good
to pick up a piece of garbage,

and always let conscience be your guide.

We could all do worse
than listen to Jiminy Cricket.

Thank you.