The Animation Guild Has Reached A Preliminary Agreement With AMPTP

The Animation Guild (TAG), IATSE Local 839, has reached a preliminary agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP).

Representatives from both organizations put in nearly a month’s worth of working days on the negotiations, which began in late 2021 and ran through spring 2022. TAG membership will vote on ratifying the agreement in late June 2022.

Below, a timeline of how the negotiations process started and has progressed since last winter.

• November 29, 2021: Negotiations with TAG officially began with the organizations addressing wage increases, new media disparities, and other priorities. At the time, five days had been allotted for bargaining, but no agreement was reached within that window.
• February 14, 2022: The two sides met once again, but despite progress an agreement could not be reached.
• February 28, 2022: A third round of negotiations took place with continued progress, but the top priorities of TAG’s members were not met in a satisfactory manner.
• February 28 – May 26, 2022: TAG’s negotiations committee and the AMPTP held ongoing negotiations in hopes of reaching an agreement.
• May 27, 2022: TAG announced the union and the AMPTP had reached a tentative agreement.

Among the issues negotiated by TAG were retroactive wage increases, significant gains for animation writers, the addition of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as a covered holiday, the establishment of a Labor-Management Cooperative Committee to address studio specific issues, and paving a path forward for union-covered remote work.

“I am incredibly proud of TAG members who volunteered their time and energy to the negotiations committee,” said TAG business representative Steve Kaplan in a release. “The proposals we brought to the employers focused on making the work lives of our members better, and we have made significant progress towards achieving those goals. A #NewDeal4Animation does not stop today, we will continue to fight for the rights and benefits our members deserve, as well as ensuring all animation workers across the U.S. can use their collective voice to make similar change.”

Since negotiations began in November of last year, TAG has seen a surge in interest towards unionizing as well as some historic firsts.

• January, 2022: Titmouse New York became the first non-L.A. studio to join TAG.
• February, 2022: Production workers on Rick and Morty and Solar Opposites filed for unionization, the latter group eventually voting in favor in April.
• March, 2022: Production workers at Titmouse LA filed to join TAG. Later that month, the guild held a solidarity rally for a new contract, drawing hundreds of participants in Burbank, Californa
• May, 2022: Editorial employees at Fox’s Bento Box Entertainment voted to join the Editors Guild, another IATSE-affiliated union. That same week, U.S. president Joe Biden invited a group of labor leaders, including Titmouse’s Rachel Gitlevich, to the White House. The group was also invited to a follow-up discussion with vice president Kamala Harris and secretary of labor Marty Walsh, where they discussed how they had organized their unions and what kind of resistance they faced along the way.