I have a friend that retired from her US secretary job and she said it's true

[theking]

Inside the Hidden Poverty Crisis at Universal Studios

Many workers at the profitable theme park say they are underpaid, struggling to pay rent and even buy food as they await a new contract: “It’s a constant battle, tearing at us mentally.”

Evelyn Arceo works 40-plus hours each week at Universal Studios Hollywood. During her overnight shifts, she prepares the pink-iced Simpsons donuts found in Springfield and the apple pies served at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. The single mother, an eight-year veteran of the park, earns $19 an hour. She’s been struggling to pay rent on her one-bedroom apartment in the working-class Panorama City neighborhood of the San Fernando Valley while also juggling bills and feeding and clothing her four kids. Her car was repossessed. Her phone was disconnected. She worries about quarters for the laundromat.

“It’s crazy that I can work 10 hours in a day, including overtime, and still can’t get by,” she says. Yet she knows she’s not alone. Across her workplace, making ends meet — always a challenge when earning an income at or close to minimum wage — has become more difficult in a time of high inflation and Los Angeles County’s affordable-housing crisis.

“Everybody talks about it, it’s a constant battle, it’s tearing at us mentally,” she says, noting that her colleagues have in recent years begun sharing stories of acute stress. “I’ve had panic attacks myself, numerous times, at work. You think, ‘Am I going to I die here?’ ”

A new UCLA Labor Center study of Universal Studios Hollywood theme park employees reveals that Arceo is no aberration. Its findings reveal widespread poverty. Forty-four percent of the workers reported that they worried about being evicted from their homes, while more than half cut the size of their meals — or skipped them — because they didn’t have enough money for food. (A quarter of the workforce has received benefits via food stamp, food bank or other need-based food donation programs.) “The guests at the park, they see us smiling — they don’t see the stress we’re under because of what we’re paid, what that means,” explains cart cook Anthony “Sarge” Monteverde Jr., who’s spent seven years with the company.

“I was surprised by the findings,” says UCLA Labor Center project director Victor Narro, who led the study team and has conducted research on low-wage work for four decades. “We suspected there were issues. But at these levels? Universal Studios is a major tourism attraction. It generates a lot of wealth. You wouldn’t think these problems would be so prevalent and intense there.”