A supermajority of in-house visual effects workers at Apple Studios have signed authorization cards to unionize with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE).
Here are details of the unionization effort:
- The group of workers consists of 17 people across six Apple Studios shows and films including Government Cheese, Surface, Outcome, and The Lost Bus.
- The positions the workers hold include vfx production supervisor/manager/coordinators, vfx witness camera operator, vfx production artist (in-house compositor, virtual art director), vfx on-set supervisor/manager, and various vfx data wrangling positions.
- IATSE has asked Apple Studios management to voluntarily recognize the vfx workers’ union, while also filing for an official National Labor Relations Board election. The election is expected to take place in the next 30-60 days.
- It should be noted that these 17 Apple workers comprise the in-house vfx workers at Apple, not the far larger group of artists who create the vfx for the Apple TV+ shows and who are spread out at studios all across the world. IATSE hasn’t yet figured out an effective way to unionize the thousands of artists in the broader vfx industry, but it is nevertheless symbolically significant that studio-side workers who facilitate vfx production are being organized.
- Last year, vfx workers at Disney-owned Marvel Studios were the first group of vfx workers to organize under IATSE. Vfx workers at Walt Disney Pictures voted shortly thereafter to organize too. Since then, workers at James Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment have organized, as have vfx artists at various DNEG locations in Canada.
