Thursday, November 30, 2006

Disney/TSL Contract Ratification

The middle of the day was spent in the big, first-floor conference room at the Mouse House's hat building. There IA representatives Gavin Koon, Steve Aredas, and I set up shop for the ratification vote for a new Disney Feature/TSL contract vote....

This particular labor agreement is the IATSE's (our mother international), but TAG has served as mid-wife from the first contract in '99/2000 until now. (This is the third, three-year go-around.) The agreement blankets the development artists and writers, also the production employees working on Disney CGI features. The Local 839 agreement -- to which it is quite similar -- covers employees working on hand-drawn projects.

We've blogged about the latest version of the contract here and here. It took awhile in coming, but this past fall Disney Feature shop stewards assembled a negotiation committee, Disney employees were asked to prioritize drafted proposals, (which they did via the web) and in October, Disney management, the IATSE, and Disney employees sat down to wrestle a new agreement into existence.

Long story short: we reached agreement in one lengthy bargaining session, the negotiation committee unanimously recommended approval by Disney employees, and today those employees unanimously approved it.

These things don't often run this smoothly, but today -- happily -- they did. So now it's on to other things for the next three years, then we get to negotiate again.

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