Disney, DreamWorks, Pixar, Lucasfilm, Sony Are Sued in Wage Theft Scandal
From Cartoon Brew:
For the past few years, the Silicon Valley wage-theft scandal has focused mostly on tech companies like Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe, but as the story has played out, it’s been revealed through deposition testimony that competing feature animation studios worked together to collectively suppress their employees’ earnings potential and that Pixar’s co-founder Ed Catmull played a major role in orchestrating an industry-wide conspiracy against animation employees.
This evidence has led to a new class action lawsuit filed yesterday in San Jose that alleges “visual effects and animation companies have conspired to systematically suppress the wages and salaries of those who they claim to prize as their greatest assets—their own workers.” The defendants named are DreamWorks Animation, the Walt Disney Company, Pixar, Lucasfilm, Digital Domain 3.0, Sony Pictures Animation, Sony Pictures Imageworks and ImageMovers. According to the suit, these companies made secret agreements to deprive thousands of their workers of better wages and opportunities to advance their careers at other companies.