For the most part, the animation industry isn't sexy - there aren't many wild personalities, there are rarely outrageous affairs, and - to my knowledge - no animator has had a televised murder investigation. The business of drawing cartoons is not prone to scandal or protest. Don't expect a Shonda Rhimes drama on animation anytime soon. However, there are plenty of stories of tense relationships between studios and employees. There was a strike at Walt Disney Animation Studios in 1941 - caused by the lack of unionization and a vast hierarchy in pay (with ink and paint girls at the bottom). In the end, Disney became a unionized shop, but the studio laid off nearly half of its 1200 employees, and Walt famously never forgave the artists who went on strike - he saw it as a huge betrayal. The first strike by the Animation Guild happened in 1979, and it was due in large part to the increased practice of studio "offshoring" in tv. It was a big enough problem that another strike was held only 3 years later for the same reason.
Animator, storyboard artist, director, and USC professor Tom Sito has written extensively on the unionization of the animation industry and its strikes. In his book Crossing the Line: The Untold Story of the Animation Unions from Bosko to Bart Simpson, he chronicles these two strikes. I'll give you a brief overview.
In the 1970s, well after Rocky and Bullwinkle was outsourced to Mexico, major television animation producers began setting up studios throughout Australia and Asia. Hanna-Barbera, for example, maintained a staff of roughly 2000 employees in Los Angeles alone, but it also subcontracted to a number of other studios in the US and set up studios in Sydney, Tapei, Spain, Mexico, and South America. In 1978, the new Animation Guild president and business agent, Bud Hester and Moe Gollub respectively, instituted a "runaway production clause", which said: "No Producer shall subcontract work on any production outside the county of Los Angeles unless sufficient employees with the qualifications required to produce a program or series are available." The animation studios that were asked to sign this clause refused to sign it, and on August 7, 1979, the Guild went on strike.
It was great timing for the strikers. The new tv season was just about to start, and it caught the studios off guard. They quickly signed the clause and ended the strike, but just as quickly incurred fees by breaking the clause. Not to be duped again, they set up an inventory of cartoons at their foreign studios in preparation for the next contract negotiation in 1982. When 1982 came along, the studios called for the immediate removal of the runaway clause and waited to sign the new contracts until July, so that employees could be depleted of money that would allow them to strike for a long period. The Guild went on strike anyway.
Unlike the strike of 1979, they weren't able to halt production. The studios continued production on cartoons unimpeded, and the animators, who weren't provided with a strike fund, slowly watched their money dissipate. There were a lot of "scabs," and the guild eventually agreed to conditions that allowed the studio to continue their practices. A lot of animators and ink and paint artists were let off and forced to look for other work.
Outsourcing in television animation is hardly controversial anymore. The state of the visual effects industry is what's making insiders nervous. Many have suggested that the solution to the modern visual effects outsourcing issue would best be resolved by unionizing. Sadly, a union can't solve everything - studios, especially ones that produce television content, are always interested in the bottom line.
Money needs to be spent as freely in animation as in live action, and workers need to be invaluable to production. The reason that visual development, storyboarding, and layout aren't outsourced is that they are seen as creative jobs that have a significant effect on the outcome of the film. Or the animation industry can always try to up its sex appeal. People seem to like that.
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