Workers on Walt Disney Pictures’ visual effects, or VFX, team filed for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board on Monday, making them the second-ever group of workers in the industry to announce their intent to unionize—the first being Marvel VFX workers, who did so three weeks prior. Though Disney owns Marvel, the two groups of workers are based out of different studios within the larger Disney corporation.
The Walt Disney Pictures workers, who are behind the visual effects in movies like the live-action Aladdin and Pirates of the Caribbean, plan to join the VFX Union, a new branch of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), which represents much of the entertainment industry behind the scenes. Their filing comes after over 80 percent of the 18 in-house VFX crewmembers at Walt Disney Pictures in Los Angeles signed cards demonstrating their desire to unionize, according to a press release by the union.
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“Today, courageous visual effects workers at Walt Disney Pictures overcame the fear and silence that have kept our community from having a voice on the job for decades,” said Mark Patch, a IATSE VFX union organizer, in a statement. “With an overwhelming supermajority of these crews demanding an end to ‘the way VFX has always been,’ this is a clear sign that our campaign is not about one studio or corporation. It’s about VFX workers across the industry using the tools at our disposal to uplift ourselves and forge a better path forward.”
Visual effects has historically been a non-union field since its beginnings in the production of the first Star Wars films in the 1970s, the release stated. But organizing workers are demanding that they, too, should be afforded the protections that IATSE has won in other industries similar to their own, such as fair overtime pay and improved healthcare benefits.
A Disney spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A union election for the Disney VFX workers will likely be held in the coming weeks, the union stated in the release. The VFX workers at Marvel are currently in the process of their election, with the votes set to be counted September 12.
