VANCOUVER ANIMATORS WHO WORKED ON SAUSAGE PARTY FILE COMPLAINT FOR ALLEGED LABOUR ABUSES
On behalf of disgruntled animators, Local Unifor 2000 in Vancouver filed a labour complaint against Nitrogen Studios today (Nitrogen is the primary animation studio behind the raunchy animated hit Sausage Party). The complaint alleges that Nitrogen failed to compensate animators for overtime and threatened to deny credit for their work if any complained.
The animators in question filed the third party complaint in order to preserve their anonymity. Denied credit and blacklisting are commonly feared reprisals among many in the industry (while IMDB credited 83 animators for working on Sausage Party, only 47 were actually listed in the film’s credits). Being blacklisted can make finding future work difficult and even impossible. While Hollywood animators are unionized to protect them from such labour abuses, Canadian ones are not (which has resulted in severe loses in the American FX and animation industry).
That’s one of the reasons that houses north of the border-and Vancouver in particular-are so attractive to American studios. Animation houses also routinely exploit a loophole in British Columbia labour regulations that allow them to skirt obligations by designating animators as “high tech workers” instead of entertainment. Under the law they are then considered contract workers and not afforded the same protections as many other industries.
Rumours of discontent surfaced shortly after Sausage Party’s opening weekend. Directors Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernan were discussing how they kept production costs down on a trade blog (Sausage Party had a budget of only 19 million dollars) when a number of posters claiming to be animators brought up the allegations. While the complaints were initially dismissed because they were anonymous, Variety confirmed the reports soon after (while not revealing any names).
Sausage Party has grossed over 65 million U.S. domestically since it’s debut August 11th.
In 2012 and 2013, American artists staged protests at the Academy Awards to bring attention to the problems facing the industry. American FX and animation houses have been shutting down as business-and jobs-migrate to studios outside of the U.S. that employ non-unionized labour and are heavily subsidized by their governments (Vancouver is home to half a dozen high profile animation houses, all with impressive resumes). Studio owned houses like Industrial Light and Magic and Sony Pictures Imageworks (Sony distributed Sausage Party) have remained silent on the issue.
Neither Sony nor Nitrogen have responded with an official statement while Tiernan (who has been accused of openly threatening people’s careers if they refused to work overtime unpaid) claimed the accusations were “without merit.”
Source: Variety, iO9, The Washington Post
Photo: Sony Pictures Entertainment
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