You might call it "low grade labor", but those are the people making sure that tens of thousands of people don't die or get hurt each day on rides and attractions. They are the public-facing part of the company and the people that one thinks of when they think of a WDW employee (they certainly don't think of the suited executive sitting at a desk in California or New York). If you have a good or bad experience at WDW, it was probably because of a "low grade" employee. They deserve a living wage, whatever that may be in central Florida.
Additionally, there is a massive labor shortage in the Orlando area, so I'm told, and a massive shortage of people willing to do house cleaning/room cleaning at the hotels and resorts. I heard a few weeks ago that Disney was paying bonuses of $1,000+ for newly hired house cleaning staff.
Amen.
The bold part is exactly how it is supposed to work. You may take offense to "low grade labor" and that's fine. But the people who empty the million trash cans, work in the QS restaurants, sweep the streets, and yes, even stand at the loading areas of the rides, are exactly that. If Disney can find enough people to do it for what they are willing to pay, then they will not get paid substantially more. That is, unfortunately, how economics works. When they can't find the people, that is where the bolded part comes in. I expect we'll see hiring bonuses more and more with the jobs that no one wants to do, like housekeeping, and the jobs that require some kind of skill set and certifications, like bus driving, but they will always try to keep them to bonuses and not to pay increases.
I also suspect Disney will never have a problem hiring for low paying jobs overseeing ride loading. There will always be college interns, retirees, snowbirds, foreign exchange workers, and more that will gladly do that with a smile for almost no pay just for the experience. I think you see the same with gift shop workers and qs cashiers and table cleaners. These are non-demanding jobs. Even many of the hospitality jobs are easy to fill like hotel desk workers looking for experience, full service restaurant servers.
If you want a job that pays more money, you need to find a skill that is hard to replicate. There is precious little of that among the front line workers at Disney. Whether they should get paid a living wage, however that is defined, is not something I disagree with. I wish everyone who worked full-time got paid a living wage. I wish my wife, a pre-school teacher, got paid a living wage. But wishing won't make it happen. If you want a higher wage, learn to do something that fewer people can, or are willing, to do.
Disney has purposefully made it so that as much of their labor force as possible is not, and never will be, something that can't be done by snowbirds looking for a fun way to spend a winter or a college intern looking for a resume line item. And where that isn't true, or even where it is, Disney is looking into as much automation as they can possibly find. See the monorail, the gondolas, online check-in, order ahead food service and more...