Drawing the Line: The Untold Story of the Animation Unions

Animator Tom Sito’s book Drawing the Line: The Untold Story of the Animation Unions from Bosko to Bart Simpson came out in 2006, but only recently came to our attention. If you think about the history of traditional animation, that industry has already faced issues including labor law abuses, outsourcing and tax incentives. This book details the long history of labor unions and animation with many direct parallels to what is going on in visual effects today. Recommended reading.

Amazon links follow…


Drawing the Line: The Untold Story of the Animation Unions from Bosko to Bart Simpson can be ordered from Amazon in hardcover and is also available for the Kindle.

Tom Sito’s web site and blog can be found at tomsito.com

8 thoughts on “Drawing the Line: The Untold Story of the Animation Unions”

  1. I’m an animator in the motion graphics industry. 5 years ago, in 2005, I wanted to explore joining the Animation Union. Though motion graphics in its current form is still a nascent industry, it’s been around in one form or another since the dawn of television.

  2. Do you have an understanding of how unions work? Did they represent the company you worked for? Accepting your dues with no contract in place would have been much worse in my opinion.

    I tried to contact you when you posted at first a few days ago but deleted your post because it was from a made up email and domain so I could not contact you for clarification. I worry about “five years ago I… ” posts not adding much to this very serious conversation. They are interested now and it might be wise to listen to what they have to say.

  3. There’s no reason to discount a comment simply for choosing to remain anonymous. There’s an enthusiastic vibrancy to the web’s ecosystem of comments and a lot of it is due to comments being able to, at times, be posted anonymously.

    Most fundamentally, it allows for people to be wrong. (see 4chan article in Wired magazine)

    That said, there’s really no reason to question my individual competency or knowledge of “how unions work”. At their core, Unions are meant to represent their members mutual economic and social interests. Check out the Freelancers’s Union here: http://www.freelancersunion.org/

    When you say “they are interested now” what do you mean exactly? Who is interested, and what are they saying? There is nothing in your comment that indicates what you mean.

    Concerning your desire to further discount my comment by claiming it’s somehow obsolete because the experience it describes is five years old. That just doesn’t make any sense. Regardless of when the experience happened, its factuality remains. The reason I mentioned the timeframe was to acknowledge that time has passed, and maybe things are different now; that, and to show that this has been an issue for all animators for a long time. If my personal experience has anything to do with it, I can add that two cents to the pot.

    To oblige your need for currentness. I just contacted the Animation Guild. Literally. Today. Five minutes ago. They are very nice. However, once again, I had to explain to the first person I spoke to what Motion Graphics Animation was. It was like having a word for word conversation repeated back to me five years later. It felt as if nothing had changed.

    Fortunately, this time, I was able to be connected with Steve Kaplan.

    Steve spoke with me at length about the state of the industry, and said that I was unable to join the animation guild/union voluntarily as an individual. They have a facility focused infrastructure, not an artist focused infrastructure. Basically, the way their individual union is setup, you’d have to already be employed at a facility that has an agreement with them, and you’d be obligated to join, It’s just not in their current system’s dna to do it the other way around.

    Where does that leave the entire freefloating freelancing vfx, design, animation and motion graphics industry? That’s not a rhetorical question. I want to know. Should we join the industry non-specific freelancers union?

  4. That’s what I meant when I asked if you knew how unions worked, no disrespect intended… they do not represent individual artists without contracts with facilities as their health and pension plans depend in part on contributions from the employers for hours worked.

    What I meant about them being interested now is that unlike 5 years ago the IBEW and 839 have recently announced the desire to organize VFX… that is a new development. What that means, when and how is what we are waiting to hear. I have standing offers to IBEW and others to sit with us for a podcast and article to explain all this. IBEW is holding a second informational meeting this weekend.

    You raise good questions about the design of any traditional union – does it fit? I think we need to hear what they are thinking to decide that. I worry that anything less will have no respect. Visual effects is frequently the largest department on a film and one of the only ones with no representation. I am aware of the freelancers union but need to learn more. The area of motion graphics is a whole other area that needs to be discussed.

  5. Hello,

    I think the frustration is quite common in the industry. Artists want to join a union but aren’t entirely sure how to do it.

    What we need to understand is that you can’t just “join” The Animation Guild, you either have to work for a company already unionized or anonymously sign a rep card:

    http://www.animationguild.org/repcard

    If enough of your co-workers do so, it goes up for vote at the company and becomes a guild signatory if the vote is in there favor. I know it’s tough but it’s the law of how a facility gets organized.

    Another union is also interested in representing vfx artists and I encourage you to come to their meeting this Sunday. Voice your concerns. Speak up.

    If you want to know what they can do for you, read my article that gives you an overview of what they offer:

    http://vfxsoldier.wordpress.com/2010/10/31/what-a-union-does-for-you/

  6. Hello caller and Jeff .. good to speak to both of you again!

    Caller – it was a great pleasure speaking with you. I apologize for not having your name at the ready, but I was hoping to get an email from you as your phone battery was dying and we had discussed you sending me a message to further our conversation.

    To be clear, you spoke first to our Office Manager whose job requires her attention on the operational and financial matters of the organization. While her knowledge of visual effects and specifically motion graphics may be less than ours, I will say that without her tireless and stalwart efforts, our membership of over three thousand would be left “twisting in the wind”. I do not mean to be insulting to you, but disparaging her is not something I would stand without at least clarifying with whom you were speaking and why she may have been lacking with information for you. It is also why she passed the call to me.

    Jeff is correct when he states that the current major requirement for membership into most Labor Organizations is employment at facilities that are signatory to their contract. The contract negotiations the IATSE and Local 839 undergo with producers and facilities carry financial requirements that the signatory entities are responsible for. These payments are what help fund the health and pension benefits that we are able to extend to our membership. Also, since 839 does not carry an employment roster, as its proven to be a burden to our industry, membership in the Guild would offer tertiary benfits through organizations like Union Plus and not the major items that most artists are seeking.

    However, as we discussed, with disciplines like yours and artists who work in the Games field are in need of health and pension contributions as well as contractual protections that a labor organization is formed to provide. These matters are extremely pertinent and present and are at the forefront of discussions that are taking place within the IATSE as well as being posed to the IBEW in meetings they are holding with artists.

    Please feel free to contact us again at your convenience in this matter. I would love further discussion with you as I am attempting to gather as much information and approach the IATSE from within their organization about visual effects artist representation. Your needs and the points we discussed are important to me and I’d like to be able to count on your opinion when I have more facts to present.

    Steve Kaplan
    Labor Organizer
    The Animation Guild
    Local 839, IATSE

    [email protected]

  7. Many, many many artists who work in VFX and Motion Graphics work for studios and companies as freelancers. They work for companies on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis. TAG and IATSE should be looking for a way to represent them as artists in this profession with portable benefits and labor-law enforcement. Otherwise, they’ll be the ones who are hired without contracts at all. My 2

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