Opinion & Analysis: The Questions of “Inclusion” and Lay-offs in the Modern Corporate World
The ABC building on my last day of work. July 27, 2023.
Just before Thanksgiving last year, on November 22, a movie was released on Disney+. It was a feel-good, well-made, uplifting film called “Out of My Mind.” It told the story of a young girl with Cerebral Palsy and her quest to be understood and accepted by her classmates. Around this time, Disney filled its social media platforms with positive messages of inclusion around people with CP. It was the kind of move you’d expect from a company that is thought to be on the forefront of progressive change.
My name is Allan Raible. I was born with mild Cerebral Palsy that mostly affects my walking. I worked for ABC/Disney for 21 years, from 2002 until I was laid off in the middle of 2023. I worked in the News Research Library for six years and the Music Library for the next fifteen. On the side, whenever I had a chance, I wrote music reviews and pieces for the websites of “Good Morning America” and ABC News. In the Music Library, I was respected for my ear and finding great pieces of music for shows like “GMA” and “20/20.” I worked tirelessly during the pandemic years, often extending my work time beyond typical hours to make sure work got done.
Later, in 2022, I had a massive panic attack after dealing with too many spreadsheets, focusing on too much visually-intensive work. When I was in high school, attending the Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn, I had been diagnosed as being “non-binocular.” As a result, my eyes don’t always line up and they tend to flicker back and forth. When I had my panic attack, I was able to relocate the paperwork from three decades earlier, diagnosing me with this condition.
When I was in high school, this condtion excused me out of Geometry class. I never thought that this would affect me as an adult. As someone who has spent my more than four decades on this planet trying to appear as “normal” as possible, for the first time in my professional career, I made a request to Disney HR to have the clerical aspects of my job lessened (or eliminated) for my health. I was dealing with programs across the Disney platforms and the creative aspects of my job were getting more and more sizable, so I had confidence in making this request. I sent the paperwork I had to HR and they asked me to get re-evaluated. In October of 2022, the new eye doctor evaluation backed up my request, lining up with the original diagnosis. I thought that this was an “a-ha” moment that explained so much of the discomfort I felt in the position I had had for fifteen years. I thought HR would help me. Instead, they said, “We’ll give you a second monitor.” Was this a help? A little… (Very little.) In January 2023, I got my second monitor.
To be clear, I can do clerical work, at a reasonable level. It was the sheer volume of what I was being asked to do and the amount of time staring closely at detailed screens that was creating the issue.
In April of 2023, I received an emailed Zoom invite labeled “HR Check-In.” My first thought was, “Oh, they are checking to see how well I am doing with my second monitor.” I was wrong. Like something out of the coldest scene in “Succession,” that “HR Check-In” was my Burbank-based boss and a visibly shaking HR woman telling me that my last day was July 27. My job had supposedly been “eliminated.” My boss insisted that the decision was “not performance based,” but considering I had just gone out on a limb and made a request to alter my responsibilities based on my needs, I have my doubts. At the end of July, I got my severance and I reluctantly left a company I had loved, wondering if I had kept my mouth shut about the panic attacks and my eye issue, if I’d still have a job. To make matters worse, of the supposed 7,000 people being “let go,’ I was the only one from the New York Music Library.
Nineteen months after my last day, I am still looking for a full-time job.
I had originally gotten my job at ABC through an organization that helps people with disabilities find employment. That organization has since moved and changed focus. I thought I’d be protected, working with HR and making an honest request. As someone who has spent my life trying to dance around my CP, making such a request was a difficult move on my part. “Inclusion” is great until it causes issues and with companies becoming too large to function like they once did, it is easier to mask potentially negligent layoffs under the vague, malignant guise of “corporate restructuring.” What happened with me at Disney isn’t technically illegal, but it is a poor business move that indicates where most of these companies actually are when it comes to accommodations, even with long-term employees who view themselves as more than just mere cogs in the machine.
I have applied for nearly twenty positions at ABC since I left and have yet to even get an interview. This is strange because as I was leaving, they recruited me as part of an “Employee Retention Program.” As a person with editorial news experience, encyclopedic pop culture knowledge and a knack for writing, surely, they would still want me.
Around the time of my layoff notification, a piece was run on “World News Tonight” with Whit Johnson about a five-year-old boy with CP, who had just learned to walk in front of his class for the first time. This mirrors my own story almost exactly. I know with stories like this and with movies like “Out of My Mind,” Disney thinks they are doing the right thing, but with my personal experience around being so coldly laid off, these moves come off as shockingly hypocritical. People with disabilities can be used for good press or as “inspiration porn,” but if someone asks for help, they get thrown away.
The new political landscape makes this even scarier. While Bob Iger reportedly has Disney joining other companies in enforcing the Trump administration’s decrease in “D.E.I.” programs, this assault on American workers who are “othered” in any way, continues. As someone who gets asked on every digital job application if I have a disability, I now wonder if that is the reason why, with my over two decades of network experience, on-air radio experience and a Daytime Emmy certificate win for my Music Department work, I still have yet to be interviewed anywhere.
Making things worse, with A.I. and digital filtering gaining more ground, it seems that humans no longer look at resumes, instead relying on some mystery salad of keywords. Welcome to the new corporate dystopia where great candidates fall through the cracks because they don’t check certain boxes and aren’t regarded for the actual skills they bring to the table. During this unspeakably difficult time, pay attention to what companies are doing behind the scenes and what images they try to project onto themselves.
Representation is great and I’m glad Disney is doing its part to spread positive messages about people with disabilities. Whether they intended it or not, the fact that I no longer work there so soon after making a simple request, gives the possible hint that they don’t quite practice what they preach. In the current climate, it is really upsetting that so many large companies have seemingly targeted so many marginalized groups. It definitely signals troubling trends.
As I am writing this, it was just announced that Disney laid off another round of people. Hopefully they didn’t single out people in currently vulnerable groups.
Our differences make us stronger. Diversity is important. Scaling back the “D.E.I.” programs is a huge step backwards. I fear a world where discrimination is legal and the only opportunities are given to certain limited groups of people. If that is where this all leads, we are on the wrong side of history.