The Animation Guild

The Animation Guild (TAG) is a professional guild and union of animation artists, writers, technicians, and production workers. The full name of the organization is The Animation Guild and Affiliated Optical Electronic and Graphic Arts, Local 839 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States, its Territories and Canada, American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations/Canadian Labour Congress.

History

Before the Guild

Before the founding of the union on January 18, 1952, under the name "The Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists Guild, IATSE Local 839", known as "Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists Guild" for short, the push to unionize the animation industry in the United States came from the Screen Cartoonist's Guild. It was a union which held its first union meeting in 1937 and won recognition in 1941.

From 1940 to 1941, animators at Walt Disney Studios were successfully organized, with a victory for the Guild and defeat for Disney and the company union known as Federation of Screen Cartoonists (FSC), following the end of the strike. Later, in 1944, the Guild sent organizers to New York City to form a local chapter, Local 1461. In 1947, the Guild had an unsuccessful twenty-eight-week strike against Terrytoons, Inc. despite receiving support from other unions. Terrytoons hired students from New Rochelle High School as scabs, and Paul Terry outlasted strikers with a "large backlog of unreleased films". The strike was later described as the animation industry's "most devastating blow" for animators.