The Animation Guild (Local 839, IATSE) Reaches Tentative Contract Agreement With the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers

Early today word reached (out here in the far reaches of the high desert) that a long, arduous process between my old employer and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers had come to a conclusion:

"We reached a tentative agreement with the AMPTP last night on a new Animation Guild Master Agreement. ..."

The Negotiation Committee members I talked to over the course of contract talks said the negotiations were intense. Talks concluded at 11 P.M. last night, after five days at the table.

Labor negotiations, under the best of circumstances, are not easy. The entertainment industry is one of the last in the United States that is heavily unionized by non-public unions and guilds, a resilient vestige of the unionization that went on in mining, manufacturing and other industries during the '30s and '40s. The International Alliance of Motion Picture and Theatrical Employees is the umbrella labor organization under which the Animation Guild operates; over the past several contract cycles, IA representatives have been participants in the talk. This time around, IA Vice-President Mike Miller joined TAG Business Representative Jason MacLeod and the Guild's negotiation committee in the talks.

What I said about the talks on FaceBook:

Negotiations are NEVER easy, under the best of conditions. I know that the Guild did a LOT of preparation, and had a lot of dedicated, focused committee members. And that it achieved some goals but not all goals. (It is always thus.)

To Jason MacLeod, Mike Miller and TAG members who worked so hard on the contract: THANKS for getting down in the arena. THANKS for fighting for every animator, checker, board artist, designer, animation writer, technical and timing director, supervising director, story editor (and everyone else) who works on cartoons.

Just ... THANK YOU. Because of your efforts, lives will be better.

The agreement will run (retroactively) from August 1, 2018 to July 31, 2021. The Animation Guild put a lot of focus on preparing for negotiations, and (reportedly) the preparations paid off. As the Guild announces the specifics, I will post details of the new agreement here. They'll have an impact over the next three years on every active Animation Guild member.