Don your cheese-hats, it’s collective action time
Quality assurance testers working for Activision Blizzard at Raven Software have voted to unionise within theCommunication Workers of America, the first notable such union at a US-based studio. Three members of the Game Workers Alliance (GWA) group voted against, while 19 voted in favour. The vote means legal recognition for the group at theCall Of Duty: Warzonedevelopers, whichfirst organisedin January in response to layoffs at the end of last year.
The GWA tried to stream the vote count live on Twitch but technical issues forced them to useTwitter Spacesinstead. Senator Tammy Baldwin, representative for Raven Software’s home state of Wisconsin, tweetedher congratulationsto the group after the result was announced. Several members of the GWA celebrated their unionisation win by drinking beer andwearing cheese-shaped hatson their heads, as you do in Wisconsin.
Bloomberg reportsthat, recently, management at Activision Blizzard and Raven Software had sent videos to staff to dissuade them from voting in favour by arguing that unions couldn’t guarantee pay increases and union contracts would threaten flexible working. Last week, Activision Blizzard was also found by US National Labor Relations Board prosecutors to have illegallythreatened staffin relation to collective action amongst them. The company denied that they had acted wrongly.
Activision Blizzard have been mired in controversy and legal action surrounding accusations ofsexual harrassment,workplace discriminationandpoor working conditions. Pension funds based in New York are currentlyseeking accessto the company’s records in pursuit of CEO Bobby Kotick following Microsoft’s$68.7 billion acquisitionof Activision Blizzard, which began in January and wasapprovedlast month. To add insult to injury, Activision Blizzard tried to roll out a ‘diversity space tool’ this month and had to roll it back, awkwardly.
