Abigail Disney Calls Bob Iger's $65.6M Salary "Insane"

"When he got his bonus last year, I did the math, and I figured out that he could have given personally, out of pocket, a 15 percent raise to everyone who worked at Disneyland, and still walked away with $10 million," she said at a conference.

Filmmaker and activist Abigail Disney — granddaughter of company co-founder Roy Disney — says she believes that Disney chairman and CEO Bob Iger is grossly overpaid.

In December, it was revealed that Iger's salary was up 80 percent in the company's most recent fiscal year to $65.6 million. He had earned $36.3 million in 2017 and $43.9 million the year before that.

Abigail Disney called Iger's pay "insane" while speaking on a panel about "humane capitalism" at the first annual Fast Company Impact Council last week, as quoted by Fast Company.

"I like Bob Iger. Let me be very clear: I think he’s a good man. But I think he’s allowing himself to go down a road that is the road everyone is going down," she said. "When he got his bonus last year, I did the math, and I figured out that he could have given personally, out of pocket, a 15 percent raise to everyone who worked at Disneyland, and still walked away with $10 million. 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."

Her comments was made on the heels of an Equilar report noting that Iger's pay is about 1,424 times that of the median pay for a Disney employee, which was pegged at $59,434.

Abigail Disney argued that a salary at that level has "had a corrosive effect on society" and noted that she's had conversations with Disneyland employees who've told her they are struggling to pay for medicine and other needs and have seen a reduction in their benefits.

On Sunday morning, she took to Twitter to double down on her remarks: "Let me very clear. I like Bob Iger. I do NOT speak for my family but only for myself. Other than owning shares (not that many) I have no more say in what happens there than anyone else. But by any objective measure a pay ratio over a thousand is insane."

A Disney rep told The Hollywood Reporter that the company has a starting hourly wage of $15 an hour at Disneyland, which is double the federal minimum wage, and committed up to $150 million for an education initiative that allows hourly employees the opportunity to earn a college or vocational degree tuition-free.

The rep added, "Mr. Iger’s compensation is 90% performance-based and he has delivered exceptional value for shareholders: Disney’s market capitalization has grown exponentially over the last decade, rising $75 billion in the last month alone, and the stock price has increased to $132 a share from $24 a share when Mr. Iger became CEO in 2005—all of which directly benefits literally thousands of employees who hold our stock.”

12:55 p.m. This story has been updated to attribute Disney's statement to The Hollywood Reporter.