1982 animators' strike
[7] However, for much of the decade, the prohibitive costs associated with shipping, logistics, and customs offset the potential savings that animation studios stood to gain by outsourcing.
[14] Kilty's successor, Lou Appet, had been a vocal labor activist since the 1930s, but for much of his tenure as business agent he was involved in a legal dispute with his predecessor.
[14] In 1978, Appet retired, and the executive board that replaced him included individuals who decided to act more confrontationally with studios regarding runaway productions.
[14] During contract negotiations that occurred that year, the union included a provision that would have barred studios from subcontracting production work outside of Los Angeles County, California, in all cases "unless ... sufficient employees with the qualifications required to produce a program or series are unavailable".
[14] The studios that the union were primarily targeting with this clause were Hanna-Barbera, Bakshi Productions, DePatie–Freleng Enterprises, Marvel Comics, and Ruby-Spears, as well as other smaller companies.
[15] At Hanna-Barbera, the main target of the strike, several hundred employees picketed outside of the studio, prompting the Los Angeles Police Department to send officers.
[20] For starters, many companies circumvented the clause by simply reducing their local production capacity through firings, allowing them to continue to outsource work to other countries.
[19] Prior to 1979, Hanna-Barbera employed many Canadian graduates from Sheridan College, but after the strike, the company revoked their O-1B visas, forcing many of them to return to Canada.
[21] By the time contract negotiations were set to come up again, many of the studios were willing to fight back against the union's push for greater protections against runaway productions, leading to another labor strike.
[22][23] While the negotiators had numerous points of contention regarding such topics as minimum wage, sick leave, and allocating screen credits,[21] the biggest issue by far concerned runaway productions.
[23] While the union sought to expand the coverage and enforcement of the clause they had included in the previous contract,[22] many studios wanted the provision removed entirely.
In early September, the union allowed members to return to work at smaller studios, and in early October, with many members resigning from the union and returning to work, Local 839 signed an agreement with studios that did not include protections against runaway productions, leading to the strike's end on October 16.
[22] Following heated debates that continued into the night, the members there voted by a two-thirds margin to authorize the union leadership to call for a strike if needed.
[26] Some animators, such as Ward Kimball's son John, played Dixieland jazz, while others roller skated and waved flags and picket signs.
[26] The strike and picketing received relatively little media coverage at the time, due in part to other labor disputes involving SAG and the National Football League Players Association.
[28] At the time of the strike, the MPSC was a local union of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), which represented workers in many different areas of the film and television industry.
[34] Several major animation projects were affected by the strike, including Richard Williams's Ziggy's Gift and Don Bluth's adaptation of East of the Sun and West of the Moon.
[24] While Ziggy's Gift was completed after the union allowed animators to return to work at smaller studios in September,[35] Bluth's adaptation would never come to fruition.
[21] The strike ultimately hurt many of the studios that were involved,[21][18] and the industry as a whole experienced a slight decline as major production companies became more hesitant to invest in animation.
[21] According to historian David Perlmutter, the strikes, "which publicly aired grievances that had built up gradually over the previous decade, did incalculable harm to the morale at the Hanna-Barbera studio".
