The Animation Guild studies that this morning, with a supermajority of employee help, animation staff at Powerhouse Animation Studios in Austin, Texas despatched a letter to firm leaders requesting voluntary recognition to affix the Guild (IATSE Native 839). The organizing committee additionally filed a petition with the Nationwide Labor Relations Board to carry an election to unionize, if vital.
The transfer is a milestone within the union’s historical past, marking TAG’s first organizing marketing campaign in a “right-to-work” state. Additionally it is the Guild’s third organizing effort exterior L.A. County — after profitable efforts to unionize Titmouse and Late Night time Cartoons in New York. As animation sees progress in states providing the business the identical movie credit as reside motion, TAG asserts it can proceed to work steadily to deal with staff’ rights in animation hubs throughout the U.S.
Based by Frank Gabriel, Brad Graber and Bruce Tinnin in 2001, Powerhouse Animation Studios develops and produces conventional 2D animation, movement comics, movement graphics and extra for sequence, movie, online game cinematics, commercials, and so forth. A few of its greatest identified tasks embody the critically acclaimed Castlevania sequence, which is getting a spin-off sequence Castlevania: Nocturne; Masters of the Universe: Revelation with Mattel, in-house unique Seis Manos with VIZ and Greek fantasy fantasy-actioner Blood of Zeus (all for Netflix) in addition to engaged on The Adventures of Child Hazard and Santiago of the Seas for Nickelodeon and OK Ok.O.! Let’s Be Heroes for Cartoon Community.
Fashionable right-to-work insurance policies are constructed on the 1935 Wagner Act and the 1947 modifications of the Taft-Hartley Act, which outlawed the “closed store” and obligated unions to offer their advantages to non-members. Proponents say these legal guidelines shield staff’ particular person freedoms and restrict the political and office energy of unions. Opponents argue that state right-to-work legal guidelines are redundant to present federal legal guidelines in opposition to forcing an individual to affix a union and provides extra leeway to massive firms to mistreat staff.
In line with the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), right-to-work states originate 36% extra discrimination costs to the Equal Employment Alternative Fee (EEOC) and have the next share of low-wage occupations than different states (24% of jobs versus 14.5% in 2019). Twenty-six U.S. states presently have right-to-work legal guidelines, though Michigan’s repeal is ready to take impact subsequent yr.
