From El Brew:
Though they share the same name and the same owners, there is a wide starting salary gap between the two Titmouse animation studios that operate in Los Angeles and New York City. ...
[T]here is a nearly $700 weekly gap between starting wages for Los Angeles and New York artists working on the same show. ... [T]he studio's starting salary for workers in New York is only $20,800. That figure ranks below New York's average starting wage for unskilled laborers like doormen ($25,680) and sanitation workers ($27,842). ...
And so on. (If you haven't already, go read the whole piece.)
I don't begrudge Titmouse's owners for maximizing their profits. That's what companies do. And I don't begrudge New York artists for leaving New York to get better pay in California.
(I didn't quite get the Brew commenter who wrote: "They want more money but they want it the easy way." This means, I guess, if you're a New Yorker who has the gumption to pull up stakes and go where the wages are higher, you're lazy.)
I've been at this awhile now and I've learned that the way it works is, you get what you have the juice to get. In Los Angeles, sixty years of union wages have lead to higher weekly paychecks for artists working in L.A. Sixty-five years ago, New York had higher animation wages than California. Like Los Angeles, New York was unionized, with a contract that called for a four-day work week and better working conditions than L.A. But, one by one, the New York studios closed, and Southern California came to predominate. This happened for a multitude of reasons: area living costs were lower and the available pool of highly skilled artists was larger. The gravitational pull of production was on the west coast, not the east. The weather was better. Etc.
But you want to know the reasons for the wide difference in pay between the coasts now? Here they are:
1) Market conditions.
2) Union contracts.
That's why Titmouse Hollywood pays higher than Titmouse New York.
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29 comments:
I read through all that and the 79 commentaries. It appears that he got these shows by signing a sub-contractor contract with the D. So he has a marignal crew in Los Angeles that pays Union Scale, and subcontracts the rest out to his own studio elsewhere. And he calls the shots. He gets to get the shows by lowballing the cost, and then turns around and screws the mass artists he hires out of artschool. Under the guise of giving them a break and offering family-like feelings and promotions to those that excell. Believe me, he will keep down all he can, he has his chosen few, and they decide who they let up into their lofty ranks.
The thingy with me about what he does is that he comes across as the artist' best friend. He wants people with passion for the industry. Well. Anybody who is young, and put themselves through their 10 formative years watching crap like he makes, and then saddles themselves with a 100K student loan has definately got passion. Now why not use them to the hilt? Call it valuable training. And here's the other thingy that gets me: He comes across as doing this here in this country to keep the work in this country. Like-duh! We've just gone through 20 years of these congloms giving our work to first: tent-pole studios across the US of A that bid lower (like his), then secondly: to third world monkies that everyone knows can be trained to do this stuff. Because anyone can do it. BUT, what comes back is crap. And it costs a lot to fix it. And HE'S keeping it in this country? Haw! He's just underbidding and creating a racket that will work only for a while at best. The news is: the work is coming back into this country, and is coming back to LA because this is where the talent is that can do it more correctly quicker. And the studios that are underbidding for these jobs are paying us a fraction of what we were making a decade ago. For worldknown licensed characters.
Because they, like mousetit, know how to go around the Union stipulations. There's a market for it.
His minions cry wolf in saying that he's the only one who is doing clean-up in this country. Excuse me? I've been in his studio and seen the conditions: elbow-to-elbow workstations for rows upon rows. He produces his show in Flash. I've worked in Flash enough to know that what he says is cleanup is actually digital inking. Laying down inklines and pushing and shoving and pulling on the mouse in order to make a symbol or an image vectorized so you can manipulate it.(Flash is, after all, a graphics manipulation program). I've done a lot of that. And his best animators have no more knowledge or skill that they can impart on anyone who can figure it out themselves. So where does all this "clean-up" lead? Artists and Union take notice: Meta-carpel-tunnel-syndrome-city. I can see it coming on down the line. At $400 a week, scores of artists trashing there wrists in an un-regulated studio for the sake of their passion. Theyd be better off turning tricks.
So dont be fooled little kiddies. Family-like feelings are doled out by the bigboys too. And any of them will cut you out once you start acting independent: that is, not working long hours for free to be a 'team player', not taking up perks like doing your own project on their computers, where they can rip you off after examining you and whats inside your head.
So where do you wanna take this? I'm tuckered out and only running on recall what I read an hour ago.
But man, guys like this piss me off. Love him or hate him, but in hindsite, I'm sure he's gonna leave a lot more bad feelings than good.
I know this is a union blog so expecting fair analysis is kind of a joke but the cartoon brew post is missing a huge fact. titmouse NY hires clean up artists and pays them 400 a week. Exactly the same amount they pay clean artists in titmouse L.A. The discrepancy in pay comes to the fact that titmouse L.A. has a larger studios with more highly paid positions.
I keep hearing that TM clean up artists in LA are paid $400. I don't know that for a fact, but it's been stated here and at Cartoon Brew.
I've gone through Robin Red Breast multiple times. It's union because Diz stipulates it to be so. Artists I talk to are happy to have the work at union wages.
I know a few guys who haved from titmouse NYC to L.A and they say the pay is the same, with a small gap that grows larger the higher up u are in the ladder.
I don't know how true that is. I just take offense that CB did such shoddy research. You are going to compare entry level wages in NYC not to its L.A. based counterpart with the same employer but to standardized public sector jobs?
Why not compare the L.A union jobs to unionized teacher wages in Cali.
I am not working at a studio that has either the words 'tit' or 'mouse' in it. Sorry, I think the name says everything you need to know about the work and pay.
Everybody who has commented said that non-union clean-up artists at Titmouse make $400 per week. But this article was about the wage disparity on the Disney show Motorcity, which has different pay scales for doing the same job in LA and NY.
From what I've read, the NY and LA wage parity is for non-union work. The union contract stipulates a much higher wage for even the lowest paid position.
That was Amid's point and one of the reasons he wrote the article. $400 a week is a paltry wage in any industry .. in any city.
I have friends on this crew, and have visited the studio, the LA crew is HUGE. There's like 50 union artists. I doubt the studio is trying to profit while having that many people in house. They're probably just trying to get the work done.
The McDonald's of Animation.
So the union wage requirements forced titmouse to move jobs out of L.A to a cheaper location.
Well that's great. What's the controversy here?
I think the answer is simple: because they can get away with it. Is there even an animation guild in NY anymore?
But really, I'd do the same thing if I ever have an animation studio.
.. and thus highlights why unions are important. Business owners have to mind profits. Union contracts make sure that quest doesn't make the artists a casualty of that search.
Go ahead and start your company. Please, pay your artists low wages. We'll be there soon enough with cards and have a nice room to negotiate in.
There hasn't been an animation union in NYC since Local 841 closed down, many years ago.
"Profits" is an over-simplification, and suggests they're pocketing the money or doling it out to shareholders. An independent, artist-owned studio like Titmouse has to mind their cashflow to insure they can keep their doors open and their artists working during the lean months of a very cyclical, mercurial service industry, while also balancing their creative goals as a studio trying to stamp their work with a certain level of quality.
Artists want to do great work, regardless of what a network's budget might allow them, and some of us are willing to work longer hours or take a pay cut to be part of a project or a studio that's special and rewarding in dozens of non-monetary ways.
Sometimes there are projects that just can't get off the ground unless they're done for cut rates, but they're dying to be made and people are dying to work on them. They pour their hearts into the work to make it great, despite the budgetary constraints. Sometimes those projects prove successful enough that the producers and artists get to go back to the table and negotiate a bigger budget to continue. And sometimes those projects aren't a financial success for the network, and they don't get renewed, but everyone walks away proud of the work they did and the artists and studio have earned their street cred and bolstered their portfolios to nab the next, better job.
An industry that combines commerce, creativity and technology in the unique way that entertainment--and particularly animation--does is difficult to manage and codify. Unions are great and important and have their place, but they have their flaws, too. Such as when they prevent an artist from taking the job he/she really wants, or potentially drive the costs of a fragile, riskier project that may or may not get greenlit depending on the proposed budget.
If they're so interested In doing "great work,". Why do they produce horrible badly written, badly drawn shows based on horribly written and badly drawn, irrelevant comic strips like boondocks?
"If they're so interested In doing "great work,". Why do they produce horrible badly written, badly drawn shows based on horribly written and badly drawn, irrelevant comic strips like boondocks?"
Wrong studio. First two seasons of "The Boondocks" was produced by Adelaide Productions in Culver City, but starting season 3 they moved the entire production to Korea (yes, everything, including designs, storyboards, etc.)
Also, your opinion of Boondocks is irrelevant. It's the artists' opinions that matter here. I'm sure there were a lot of people on that show who loved what they were doing, or grew up on the comic strip, or though it was a culturally important thing to be a part of. While I don't agree either, there's no accounting for taste.
W one "grew up" on that strip--it was never widely syndicated enough or well liked.
And I was wondering why the quality of the art (but not the "writing") got noticeably better.
^ - YMMV. It ran in about 300 newspapers (while not "Garfield" good, it was pretty modest), many of them large metropolitan papers with wide circulation. I remember seeing it in my local paper while in high school.
I agree--it was a TERRIBLE comic strip! And terribly racist.
Corporations in the U.S. paid only an average of 12.1 percent in taxes on the profits they earned inside the U.S in fiscal 2011, according to statistics from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
The Wall Street Journal reports that it's the lowest percentage corporations have paid on those profits since at least 1972, and it's less than half of the 25.6 percent they paid on average between 1987 and 2008.
Corporations saw their profits, however, reach an all-time high at the end of 2010. The $1.68 trillion in annualized profits in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2010 beat the previous record of $1.65 trillion in the third quarter of 2006.
First off, Union wages don't force companies to leave LA. That statement is one salvo in a Union-busting strategy, but doesn't hold true. Another statement like this is when companies say the Union won't let them pay you more. This is a lie. The Union won't let your wages fall BELOW a certain level, the upper level is yours to negotiate. Read Steve's posts about leverage.
Secondly, somewhat off-topic, but also somewhat on-topic as well. DD has outsourced work, of course, to their Vancouver facility. Their current work (Vancouver) on Jack the Giant Killer is SO bad that they have had to send it back down to headquarters in Venice to fix all of it. It is so bad in fact that the release of the film has been put on hold.
Outsourcing is not cheaper. Quality issues drive up the cost of production time and time again.
Steve, if you hear anything more about this situation, please post it.
Thanks.
Why do you think they outsourced, because union minimums in there mind were too high. it bit them in the butt. It does disprove your first point though. Right or wrong companies outsource work all of the time due to union minimums. Look how many TV shows are being produced. Now look out how many union TV animators are accounted for.
Outsourcing of animated television shows has gone on in a big way since the late '60s, early '70s.
"Bullwinkle" was outsourced in the early and mid '60s to Mexico.
Today, work is being outsourced on union and non-union animation work. $400/wk is more expensive than Korea, Phillipines, or China.
If it were a "union minimum" issue, as anon 1:53 says, then Moonscoop, Renegade and Wildbrain wouldn't send work out. Except they do, just like the signator shops.
Animation Steve, not cleanup. Animation is outsourced because of minimums for animation workers as I have suffered from first hand experience. Just because you say that isn't the case doesn't make it so.
Even as you mentioned in your previous post about Cartoon Network and the costs of producing pilots, we animators get tossed aside.
Even as you mentioned in your previous post about Cartoon Network and the costs of producing pilots, we animators get tossed aside.
Again. Union minimums have an impact on outsourcing. So do non-union wage rates. So does availability of talent.
But there is more animation work in Southern California now than at any time in L.A. history. TAG has 2481 active members, of which 87% are working.
And TAG reps only a fraction of the work. There are non-union animated visual effects, non-union pre-viz, non-union animated commercials, non-union animated games.
And non-union animated features and television work.
Having said that, it is true that animation employees without the right skill sets find themselves unemployed, that there IS a degree of ageism and sexism, that a lot of the work is shorter term.
But then, there are always challenges and issues. In my memory, the only time when everyone seems to have had a job and rising wages was '92-'96. But I'm sure there were a number of folks who had trouble then, too.
First off Steve, I am pro union. I've been a member for a few years and am on withdrawal. I plan to start an indy studio and we will be union. I can't now because of union minimums, plus I think union rates are fair.
I'm not saying that union minimums are the only reason there is outsourcing, and as you pointed out there are many.
But it is a factor. There is a huge talent pool not working, who have plenty of experience but are victims to outsourcing for their job class.
Titmouse is outsourcing cleanup on a union show, and believe me there are a ton of talented and cleanup artists available in So Cal, they even have some on other shows, but not the union show. Why is that? because of the minimums.
Your opinion. I see it as a shrewd decision to increase profits. Comments in the other post talked about how Titmouse NY was in new offices with new Cintiques at new desks. That took an influx of cash. Paying artists $400/wk instead of union wages could account for that.
I'm sorry but that last comment just comes off as incredibly dumb. What is titmouse supposed to do?Put them in an empty building and expect them to perform magic? They opened a new studio. Of course they are going to buy new stuff.
If they were such evil capitalists why buy the new cintiques at all or even keep the job in America?
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