Seventy years ago, the first animation strike happened. It was in New York City, in 1937 and 1938, against kindly old Max Fleischer, the producer of Popeye, Betty Boop, and other animation icons. Does any of this language sound familiar?
Your employer -- who for 21 weeks has attempted unsuccessfully to discredit the Union and discourage the strikers; who boycotted the legal election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board -- has now displayed the most convincing evidence that he has not now and never acted in good faith, either in his representations to the Union, or to you who are not on strike.
After the Union had made very reasonable concessions and an agreement had been reached between Fleischer and Paramount on the one hand and the Union on the other, Fleischer has now repudiated that agreement in a last stand to break the strike ...
What resonates with me is how the underlying issues between companies and artist employees never change very much:
... we are forced to work at less than even a factory wage...
... Our employer ... fired 18 of us for joining a union ...
... we do not get sick leave ...
... our wages were cut more than half ...
You go back to Renaissance workshops, the same problems crop up. Technology changes. Fashions go in and out of style. But human aspirations for a better life, and other humans' desires for larger profits are always with us, century after century.
Thanks to President Emeritus Tom Sito for giving us a heads up about the document above ...
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