The Animation Guild is attempting to further expand the union’s footprint in New York with a new effort to organize Paramount +’s Stephen Colbert Presents Too ning Out the News, the Guild revealed on Thursday.
Tooning Out the News workers will be presenting management with a request for voluntary recognition on Thursday and additionally filing a petition for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board. TAG is hoping to include 38 workers, in roles including character designers, graphic artists and riggers, in the union. The Guild maintains that it has supermajority support within this workforce for the union.
The effort at the animated news satire series, co-created and executive produced by Stephen Colbert, is only the second organizing attempt by the Burbank-based IATSE Local in New York in recent history. Earlier this year, TAG won voluntary recognition for a union at studio Titmouse New York (Harriet the Spy), marking its first union outside of Los Angeles County since the signing of the Local’s charter in 1952. Before that effort, the Guild said at the time, New York animation artists hadn’t had union representation in about 30 years, since a merger between The Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists.