Around Disney TVA

These days, there's not a lot of point for an animation union rep to go to Disney's Sonora building to see Disney Television Animation employees, because there aren't a lot of them there. The Tigger and Pooh crew is long gone; Mickey's Clubhouse is history, so it's now a big, empty first-floor space in search of artists.

Happily, the Frank Wells Building on the Burbank lot is a different story ...

When I sauntered in this afternoon, I ran across a group of Phineas and Ferb artists who were happy to have a long stretch of work ahead of them (many new episodes), but had other good news:

"Inspector Oso got picked up for new episodes on Friday. I think it's 33 new half-hours. The producers told the staff the good news on Monday, and people will start coming back in the next few weeks. The word around here is that the show will be moving over to the Sonora building ..."

(Moving to Sonora makes sense, because the Mouse has a lot of empty square footage over there and it would be good if somebody on the TVA floor was drawing inside its walls.)

A number of artists asked me about retiree health benefits, what's up with the pension plan, how early can somebody access benefits? (Times being what they are, people like to know where the escape hatches are.) I told them:

1)) The Pension Trust Funds are solid, but down 17-18% due to an unfortunate economic melt down.

2) Retiree Health benefits are available to participants in the Motion Picture Industry Health and Pension Plan who have a minimum of fifteen qualified pension years (three after the age of 40) and twenty thousand contribution hours.

3) If a participant has thirty qualified pension years and sixty thousand contribution hours, they can retire wilth 100% of their monthly pension and 100% of their lump-sum Individual Account Plan at the ago of sixty ...

There's gotta be a reason people keep asking me about pension and health care, and also keep saying: "I'm really happy to be working ..."

Wonder what it could be?