The 1950s and 1960s saw labor peace in animation, although in 1969 there was a drive to institute residual payments for animation artists and writers; employers used layoffs in ink-and-paint to split the union and thwart the strike vote.
In the 1970s, the subcontracting of television animation to foreign subcontractors, known as "runaway production" began to seriously affect employment. In 1979, Local 839 struck the TV animation shops, winning a "runaway clause" that guaranteed local employment before work can be subcontracted out of Los Angeles County.
August 2, 1982: Local 839 president Moe Gollub (partially hidden, center) discusses the strike with picketers at Hanna-Barbera.
In 1982 the studios regrouped and defeated the union after a ten-week strike; after which virtually all TV animation and ink-and-paint was sent overseas.
Local 839's membership dropped to eight hundred in 1987. Filmation, the last TV animation shop doing its work entirely in the U.S., was bought by a Swiss comglomerate and closed in 1988.
|
8 |