23.11.

2017 Cartoons and Class Struggle

11.21.2017

Cartoons and Class Struggle

KENNETH BERGFELD / MARK BERGFELD

In 1941, Disney animators walked o work to demand that the New Deal be brought to
the Magic Kingdom.

E
very American has grown up on Disney movies, but how many people
have heard of the civil war in animation?

Cultural analyses of Disney and his products are common, and the
sociological e ects of his multimedia domination have been discussed ad
innitum. But little attention has been paid to the 1941 animators strike that nearly
upended the Magic Kingdom. Never before or after has the labor behind the movies that
shaped billions of childhoods been so sharply illuminated. As new workers struggles break
out across the entertainment industry, this history is more relevant today than ever.

Working for Walt

W
alt Disney could not rely on his own artistic talent to build his empire. He
was known neither for being a ne artist nor a good draftsman. The
Simpsons have even satirized him for plagiarizing Mickey Mouse and
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit from their original creator, Ub Iwerks.

His success instead turned on his ability to transform the incredibly labor-intensive
animation process. Major technological expansions allowed Disney to synchronize image
and sound, pushing animation beyond its crude beginnings. This advance brought
animation and with it, the Magic Kingdom from the margins of lmmaking to its
mainstream.

When Disney made Snow White, animators still drew gures by hand on clear celluloid
panels, which were then placed above one or two layers of static background painted on
paper. To create the illusion of movement, animators had to produce twenty-four images
for every second. For Snow White, workers made 130,000 movement drawings, not to
mention the background panels.

To streamline this process, Disney put more than eight hundred artists on an assembly line
of industrial-scale production. His method for controlling workers within this massive
operation consisted of psychological tactics culled from the studies of the day. He played
favorites, stole credit from workers, and paid di erent wages for the same job. For

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example, select animators received parking spots and reserved seats at in-house test
screenings while others had to scramble for the remaining seats or stay away all together.

Wages ranged from $12 to $300 a week. If an animator came up with a joke while working
on a short, they got a $3.50 bonus.

Walt Disney believed that an e ective company was built on teamwork and employee
voice. To di use growing discontent among animators, he launched the Disney
Federation of Screen Cartoonists, a company union that he hoped would contain his
workers demands.

The Animators Strike Back

A
nimators made Snow White, Fantasia, and Pinocchio all at the same time.
They worked long hours under extreme pressure, and many went without
pay for months. Walt said that they would receive a bonus payment once
Snow White turned a prot an empty promise all too familiar among
creative workers today. When the pay never materialized, it sparked a sense of injustice
among the animators.

Surprisingly, Art Babbitt, a head animator and president of the company union,
sympathized with the low-wage workforce. He initially joined the Disney Federation of
Screen Cartoonists in order to ght o the corrupt International Alliance of Theatrical
Stage Employees (IATSE), which was connected to organized crime. But Babbitt was soon
demanding a two-dollar raise for inkers.

Little did he know what awaited him. Babbitt immediately had to face Disneys legal
counsel, Gunther Lessing. In a former life Lessing had collaborated with Mexicos
revolutionary president Francisco Madero and defended radicals in court. Now working
for Disney, Lessing didnt give an inch to the unions.

There was also Walts brother Roy, the companys nance director. He resorted to physical
threats, telling Babbitt to keep his nose out of their business or else theyd cut it o .

It didnt take long for Babbitt to realize that the Disney Federation of Screen Cartoonists
was designed to keep workers from getting involved with industry-wide unionism. After
one of the inkers fainted because she couldnt a ord to buy lunch, Babbitt joined Herbert
Sorrells Screen Cartoonists Guild, a local of the Painters, Decorators and Paperhangers
Union.

By that time, Herbert Sorrell already had experienced a tremendous amount of struggle. As
a twelve-year old, he joined an Oakland sewer pipe plant, where coworkers routinely beat
him. It ended when he decided to whack one of them over the head with a shovel. After
World War I, he became a professional prizeghter and then moved to Los Angeles to work
as a painter in the studios. After he was red from Universal for being a union member, he
channeled his energy into labor activism.

Disney was the industrys key player. His shop would set the wages and conditions for all
the animation studios. Sorrell was committed to turning the Magic Kingdom into a dust

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bowl if the company didnt relent.

The Reluctant Dragon

T
he dispute had been simmering for a while when in February 1941, Walt
Disney called his workers together to address the real crisis we are facing.
In the style of todays captive audience meetings, he explained how he had
fought prejudices and established the cartoon as an art form. He regaled his
underpaid workers with stories of the hungry years, the debts, and the mortgages. The
speech backred. As a May 10, 1941, Nation article put it: This speech recruited more
members for the Screen Cartoonists Guild than a year of campaigning.

Every move Disney made exacerbated workers discontent. At one point, he is reported to
have said, If you boys sign with the union . . . Ill. . . Ill never let you swim in my pool
again! To which Al Dempster, a head animator, replied: Walt, swimming in your pool
doesnt feed my kids or pay my rent!

The union collected 400 union cards from 560 eligible workers. Among them, Naomi
Kleins paternal grandfather who worked at Disney as an illustrator and would end up tent-
camping outside the LA studio for several months. Following unsuccessful negotiations,
the sta voted for an indenite strike starting on May 26.

Walt Disney remained intransigent and even sacked Babbitt and other head animators in
retaliation. As the strike was about to begin, Disney appealed to the National Labor
Relations Board (NLRB) to recognize the company union as workers are free to join
whatever [they] wish.

Disney hoped that the NLRB would take his stature into account, rule in his favor, and
hand over the right to collective bargaining to the rms preferred union. But to Walts
dismay, the strike started as planned, and the Screen Cartoonists Guild brought 550
workers out on to the picket lines.

Disney responded with a campaign of intimidation. He hired photographers to document

the striking workers. Worse, he laid o nineteen employees, and rumors circulated that
two hundred more would follow.

Helping Hands

T
he strikers chose to match the escalation and started blocking trucks from
entering the studio.

But industrial muscle wouldnt suce. This was a ght over the future of the
industry, and both sides knew it. As in other labor disputes, the strikes power had to be
expanded both horizontally into the community and vertically into the companys business
model.

Workers distributed yers at cinemas demanding that theater managers and audiences
boycott Disney pictures. They also appealed to the rest of the labor movement for food
donations so that they could stay out on strike.

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Vertically, they put pressure on suppliers. By mid-July, workers had convinced

Technicolor to boycott Disney, stopping lm from entering the studio and from being
processed on the way out. Williams and British Path two other companies also
suspended processing Disney lms.

On July 5, the NLRB ocially recognized the strike and sent a conciliator to arbitrate
between the unions and Disney. Nine AFL unions returned to work, but even this couldnt
stop the animators. Disney lawyer Lessing sent a telegram to Washington blaming the
ongoing work stoppage on Communists.

Cracks started to appear in the strikes edice. Writing on behalf of those who had
returned to work, animator R.F. Fredericks argued that being anti-union was the
American way and that any di erences with the company should be dealt with inside the
organization rather than through an external agent.

This commonly used bosss tactic equates worker demands with an outside force, allowing
the employer to regain hegemony through the words of the workplaces silent majority.

The New Deal had nally arrived in the Magic Kingdom.

Defeat in Victory?

Y
et divisions between ex-strikers and scabs ran deep, and Walt Disney didnt
forgive those who rebelled. This is why Tom Sito calls the strike the Civil
War in Animation in his book Drawing the Line: The Untold Story of the
Animation Unions from Bosko to Bart Simpson. In November 1941, Disney
laid o more workers, underlining his uncompromising position.

Despite the earlier setback at the NLRB, Walt learned to use the changing political climate
and McCarthyism to discourage worker organization within his growing empire. On
several occasions, he testied at the House of Un-American Activities, denouncing strike
participants and trade union members as Communists and accusing them of having ties to
the Soviet Union.

Thanks to his testimony, many animators and writers faced unemployment, blacklisting,
political prosecution, and social stigma, including prominent screenwriter and Academy
Awardwinner Dalton Trumbo.

We can trace todays labor relations, union busting, and avoidance activities at Disney back
to the strike. Disneys human resources strategy is the direct ancestor of contemporary
employment relations, in which grievances are individualized and costs are externalized
onto workers.

With technological innovation, union avoidance strategies have become common across
the animation industry. For example, the production company Titmouse, Inc., in charge of
Disneys upcoming series Motorcity, recently split into two separate companies. The
second entity can subcontract work to non-union shops where wages are far lower.

Subcontracted artists will earn as little as four hundred dollars per week, the lowest wage
rate (ination-adjusted) ever earned by an American artist working on a Disney animation

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production. Their union colleagues earn nearly three times as much.

Meanwhile, management continues to intimidate animators. The producers of Robot

Chicken claim that unionization would increase production costs by 20 to 25 percent,
potentially leading to the shows cancelation. Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland was
more explicit when he stated fuck the union after his animators and artists joined the
Animation Guild in 2014.

Back in 1931, Walter Benjamin presciently noted: Property relations in the Mickey
Mouse lm; here, for the rst time, ones own arm, indeed ones own body can be stolen.

This applies not only to the mass audience glued to their seats but also to the workers who
produce these lms.

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