Tom Sito on Becoming a Union Top-Kick

Here's another dollop from Tom Sito's Drawing the Line... When I became an animator in 1975, I was not a supporter of any union. I was made to join because of the movie I had just been hired to work on. Richard Williams's "Raggedy Ann & Andy" was being done under a union closed-shop contract, so I paid the fees and pledged allediance to the Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists Local 841 New York of the International Alliance of Theatrical and St5age Employes of the Unites States and Canada, affiliated with the AFL-CIO. However, my heart was not in it. I thought the animators union was some kind of club of lesser artists who closed ranks to keep young people out of the business. They extorted dues out of me with threats of fines and dismissal. I never really understood what they did for me other than endless annoy the employer who had been nice enough to give me a chance in the firstplace. In monthly newsletters I saw photos of the overfed union bosses stuffed into ill-fitting suits, always smiling and shaking hands with one another. None of them seemed to have a neck. I read paragraph after paragraph of boring legal palaver about welfare benefits and old-age annuites. I thought, "What does all this have to do with making cartoons? Who needs a union? I am an artist, not a longshoreman. What do I need with employer-matched pension contributions?" It all seemed so bourgeois. Shortly after moving to Los Angeles in 1982, I had to walk a picket line for eight weeks in a citywide strike. After the strike, my savings dropped far enough that, for the first time, I needed a loan from my parents. I hated the whole idea of a union. I told myself, "If you're a good enough artist, you don't need a union to get work; you make your own deals." It wasn't until after years of being cheated, being laid off, and being assured I was part of a "family," then cheated and laid off some more, that I came to understand what my union was trying to do for me. I saw how important those defined benefits were to the older, ill artists who once were stars but now were slipping into genteel retirement. I had a gall-bladder operation that would have cost $60,000, but because of my union medical coverage, I paid only $175. One of the few union meetings I would bother to show up for was the triennial election of officers. After the Runaway Wars of 1982, I would go to meetings to make sure they didn't nominate some jerk whose career was going nowhere and thus wanted to be a union boss so he could lord it over his betters. By the time of the meeting in 1992, I had made a bit of a reputation for myself as a Disney animator. As I walked into the packed meeting, union officer Dave Teague whispered to me, "I want to nominate you for a place on the executive board." I told him, no, I didn't want the responsibility. Then layout artist Larry Eikelberry rose and with Dave nominated me for president. I was stunned. I never asked for such a thing, but I admit the honor of it struck my vanity. Being the kid in the school yard who was never picked for ball games, it felt good to be asked. Before you could say Jiminy Cricket, I had won the election. I was head of the largest benevolent organization of animation artists, writers, and technicians in the world. Me, the union-hating cycnic. Oh, well. Saint Augustine also had his doubts before conversion... This pretty much encapsulates a lot of animation artists' feelings about unions. It was certainly close to mine. When I started, I had no idea where the union offices were, and could have cared less. All the time I was growing up, my Disney-veteran father railed against the union. If he weren't already dead, me being the Animation Guild's business representative would probably kill him. It wasn't until I was plunged into the middle of a strike that I got serious about it.