With all the recent posts about our current CBA negotiations, I thought it'd be fun to take a look back at how things went 56 years ago. Today's cartoon is from the Exposure Sheet handout by the Screen Cartoons Guild negotiating committee to the membership.The SCG (local 852) was the precursor to The Animation Guild (a long story in itself there). The last line of type says "This action is the beginning of the fight to secure a wage increase on the new contract, now that negotiations have bogged down." Below that are the slogans "KEEP IN TOUCH WITH YOUR UNION FOR LATEST DEVELOPMENTS" and "WE HAVE JUST BEGUN TO FIGHT."This cartoon came via Tom Sito from Abe Levitow's daughter Judy. Abe was one of the committee members. Tom passed on copies of 7 other cartoons from that time, as well as the negotiating committee's notes, and copies of contracts from those days. From the notes it's clear the producers were taking a very hard line, and the negotiations weren't going well. Hence the SCG committee starting printing up these cartoons to get the membership involved.
Thanks to Judy Levitow for preserving this material and bringing it to us.
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In addition to having been very active in the Screen Cartoonists Guild, Abe Levitow (1922-1975) was an animator and director for Warners, MGM and UPA, for which he directed the Gay Purr-ee feature and the Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol TV special. His daughter Judy worked briefly as an assistant animator, but more recently can be heard as a traffic reporter on just about every local radio station.
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