Blog | Better Pay and Benefits

Service & Solidarity Spotlight: Walt Disney Animation Studios Production Workers Ratify Contract

Production workers at a rally.

Working people across the United States regularly step up to help out our friends, neighbors and communities during these trying times. In our Service & Solidarity Spotlight series, we’ll showcase one of these stories every day. Here’s today’s story.

In a vote taken last week, production workers represented by The Animation Guild, IATSE Local 839, officially ratified their first union contract with Walt Disney Animation Studios.

The unit covers production coordinators, production supervisors and production managers who first started organizing in 2022—the next year, a supermajority of production workers voted to join TAG. The newly minted contract includes victories like a pension, health care benefits and double-digit increases to minimum wage rates for all job roles.

“In Hollywood, we love an underdog story. Our ratification was just that—the underrepresented and underpaid coming together and demanding better pay and equity with our artistic counterparts,” said production supervisor Nicholas Ellingsworth. “In the end, we were heard and seen, and we have a pathway to further improving the conditions in which production management works.”

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