Two members of the Animation Guild negotiating committee said Tuesday that they will vote against ratifying a new contract because it lacks enough protections against artificial intelligence.
Mike Rianda, the director of “The Mitchells vs. the Machines,” said on Instagram that the AI terms in the deal are “far from what we were going for,” and that he had opposed recommending the deal to the membership.
“Studios can replace workers with AI. Studios can force you to use AI. Studios can give you AI work to finish on any timeline,” he wrote. “We didn’t get staffing minimums to protect crew sizes from AI job losses… This was gutting.”
The union, which represents 6,000 artists, technicians and writers, reached a tentative deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on Nov. 23. The ratification vote began Tuesday and will conclude on Dec. 22.
The union released the full terms of the contract last week, along with an explainer on why the AI provisions were not more robust. Several members of the negotiating committee told Variety last week why they support the deal, arguing the terms are the best they could get with the leverage they had after three months of bargaining.
The contract already includes language allowing the studios to implement “technological change,” provided they offer retraining and severance pay to displaced workers.
Mairghread Scott, another committee member who voted for the deal, said in an interview Tuesday that it’s important to acknowledge AI is a threat.
“But the most important thing is not to panic,” she said. “AI is not an issue that is going to get solved solely in contract language.”
The union represents a variety of animation crafts. Scott noted that the deal requires notification and consultation about AI use, which will lead to discussion about how AI may or may not be used in different contexts.
“We don’t want to drive the conversation underground,” she said. “We need to talk about this and we need to decide this as a community.”
The negotiating committee had 56 members, of which 29 served on the “table team” that voted to recommend the tentative agreement. A large majority of the voting members approved the deal, though the precise vote total was not released.
Joey Clift, a member of the committee’s non-voting “support team,” said on BlueSky that the agreement “doesn’t address many of our members’ top priorities.”
“I talked to a lot of TAG members about this, and people are scared,” he wrote. “Scared of losing their careers they’ve spent decades of their lives working towards, all so a few rich people can save a few bucks. We fought tooth and nail and received a few small AI protections in this contract, but these aren’t the strong, common sense AI guardrails we need to keep animation workers protected.”
Rianda is a prominent voting member of the committee, who emceed the union’s pre-negotiation rally on Aug. 10 in Burbank. On Instagram, he encouraged members to talk to both sides on the issue and come to their own conclusions.
But he also said that a “yes vote means no AI protections for three years.”
“I truly think… based on everything I learned … that the lack of these AI and outsourcing protections will cost lots of people their jobs,” he wrote. “Real members’ lives could be hurt by not having these protections.”
The union held a virtual town hall last week and will hold two more this week to give members a chance to hear from leadership. Some members have been persuaded to vote yes.
“I’m quite happy with the gains,” said one member, who asked not to be identified, saying it was the best deal they had gotten in recent contract cycles.
But others were unconvinced.
“Even if the studios say they have the best intentions, if they can find any way to undercut humans out of this industry they will,” said Chad Quandt, an animation writer. “The union has to stand by what we do and fight back for stronger standards.”
Quandt said that provisions requiring studios to give notification of AI use are not sufficient. “It’s essentially them saying, ‘Well I’ll tell you I’m stabbing you in the gut.'”
Paula Spence, an art director who serves on the committee, said it was clear in the negotiation that neither side knows how AI will play out, but that employers were concerned about putting themselves at a disadvantage to non-unionized competitors.
“When it comes down to it, our members’ concern is job security,” Spence said. “What I hope is our members learn to master it and keep it as a tool that we can use to our advantage, and not so much have it displace us in the creative work that we do.”
She also noted that the deal includes many other significant gains, such as the elimination of lower “unit rates” for timers and storyboard artists, which the union has been seeking for years.
Ratification is usually a formality, though the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees very nearly voted down its contract in 2021. Last July, IATSE voted to approve its Basic Agreement — which includes many of the same AI terms — with 86% approval.
In December 2023, many SAG-AFTRA members — including a couple of negotiating committee members — opposed their contract due to AI. That deal, which ended the four-month actors strike, was ratified by 78% of the members.
If the animation deal is rejected, negotiators would have to return to the bargaining table to see if they could get better terms. The union might also have to call a strike authorization vote, or even go on strike, to increase its leverage.
Rianda acknowledged that “no one wants” a strike, but said it’s important “to show them we’re not going to take this.”
“My opinion is we go back to get a few common-sense AI protections other unions have already achieved that would — I believe — disincentivize studios from using as much AI and help save members’ jobs,” he wrote. “The stakes are clear — fight now! — or risk losing our jobs to AI… If AI protections are important to you… this is the time to fight.”
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