Kickstart Entertainment workers join Canadian animation guild as top 5

Animation workers at Kickstart Entertainment have become the third animation studio group to join The Canadian Animation Guild IATSE Local 938. An application for certification was filed with the BC Labour Relations Board in December of last year and the results were released January 3. The Vancouver studio follows WildBrain Animation Studio, which joined the Guild in the Fall of 2023, and Titmouse Animation Vancouver in 2021.

“Momentum continues to grow as more animation workers are coming together to form unions across Canada,” said IATSE International Representative Jiaming Li. “It has been an inspiration to work with the workers at Kickstart as they come together to join the IATSE.”

Workers at Kickstart join their counterparts at WildBrain Animation Studio in Vancouver, which employs more than 800 workers and unionized in fall 2023, and Titmouse Vancouver, which joined IATSE Local 938 in 2021. They will now begin the process of working with IATSE and bargaining their first collective agreement.

Founded in 1999 in Los Angeles, Kickstart’s studios around the world and have contributed to animated projects including Wolverine & The X-Men, Transformers: Rescue Bots, Bottersnikes & Gumbles, Ready Jet Go!, Fruit Ninja, Lucas the Spider, Angry Birds: Summer Madness, Deepa & Anoop, Brown & Friends and Hot Wheels Monster Trucks. Following the successful union certification, workers at Kickstart will now begin the democratic process of bargaining their first collective agreement.

“Bargaining strong collective agreements is what we do best,” said John Lewis, international VP and director of Canadian affairs at IATSE, in a statement. We look forward to a fulsome bargaining process with this company.”