From the L.A. Times: Animation Guild Organizer Allison Smartt, left, and Disney Animation Production Coordinator Maggie Hughes, seen outside the Animation Guild headquarters in Burbank. They were key to the recent effort by production workers at Disney Animation to unionize under the Animation Guild. (Photo credit Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
The Los Angeles Times recently featured the unprecedented pace of TAG’s organizing efforts, noting that since December 2021, almost 1,000 animation industry professionals have been recognized to unionize under TAG, IATSE Local 839. More than half of those people are production workers, a category long excluded from joining the Union.
The article examines the history of the labor movement in animation, the recent TAG organizing campaign with production workers at Cartoon Network and Warner Bros. Animation, and major TAG organizing successes, including 177 production workers at Nickelodeon and the animation and production workers at Titmouse New York, which became the first animation studio outside of L.A. County to unionize under TAG.
Read the full L.A. Times article, and read more about TAG’s 2023 organizing victories in the TAG Year in Review.