Posts Tagged: unionize
Workers at Blizzard support studio Proletariat aim to unionize
On Tuesday, workers at Proletariat, the Boston-based studio Blizzard bought earlier this year to support World of Warcraft development, announced they recently filed for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Proletariat is the third Activision Blizzard studio to announce a union drive in 2022, but where past campaigns at Raven Software and Blizzard Albany involved the quality assurance workers at those studios, the effort at Proletariat includes all non-management workers. The 57 workers who want to form the Proletariat Workers Alliance include animators, game designers and software engineers. The group seeks representation from the Communications Workers of America (CWA), the union that helped QA staff at Raven Software and Blizzard Albany organize.
“Everyone in the video game industry knows Activision Blizzard’s reputation for creating a hostile work environment, so earlier this year, when we heard that Blizzard was planning to acquire Proletariat, we started to discuss how we could protect the great culture we have created here,” said Dustin Yost, a software engineer at Proletariat. “By forming a union and negotiating a contract, we can make sure that we are able to continue doing our best work and create innovative experiences at the frontier of game development.”
The Proletariat Workers Alliance asked Activision Blizzard to recognize their union voluntarily. According to the group, the company has yet to respond to the request. Activision Blizzard did not immediately respond to Engadget’s comment request.
The workers at Proletariat say they aim to preserve the studio’s “progressive, human-first” benefits, including its flexible paid time off policy and robust healthcare options. Additionally, they want to protect the studio from crunch, the practice of forcing compulsory overtime during the development of a game. They’re asking management to commit to a no-mandatory overtime policy and implement better pay and health protections for workers who agree to voluntary overtime. The Proletariat Workers Alliance says their colleagues also shouldn’t be penalized during performance reviews for not taking on extra work.
In June, Microsoft announced it would respect all unionization efforts at Activision Blizzard following the close of its $ 68.7 billion deal to buy the publisher. Earlier this month, the FTC sued the tech giant to block the merger.
Another Amazon warehouse in New York is seeking to unionize
Workers at an Amazon warehouse in a town located southeast of Albany, New York have filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board to hold a union election. The warehouse, with the codename ALB1, is hoping to join the Amazon Labor Union, which successfully convinced majority of workers at the company's JFK8 facility in Staten Island to vote in favor of unionizing earlier this year. An NLRB spokesperson told CNBC that the agency's office in Buffalo is currently verifying whether the group has truly met the minimum number of signatures needed to hold an election.
Unions typically need to get signatures from 30 percent of eligible members to be able to hold a vote. According to The Washington Post, the ALU previously said that it had passed that threshold for the Albany warehouse. Union organizers at the facility have been working on joining the ALU for months. After Amazon noticed their efforts, the company reportedly held meetings to discourage workers from unionizing. An employee also sent us photos of digital TVs at the Albany facility displaying anti-union messages. To be precise, the messages discouraged people from signing a "card" from the ALU, pertaining to the authorization cards workers have to sign for the warehouse to be able to hold a vote.
The ALU has been demanding for higher pay and safer working conditions for warehouse workers and has previously accused the company of retaliation. A few weeks after it won the election in Staten Island, Amazon fired two of the employees who were involved in its organization efforts. Their fellow organizers believed that it was a retaliatory move by the e-commerce giant. Heather Goodall, a lead organizer at ALB1, said: "The main concerns I hear from workers are about wages and safety. Besides that, there’s no job security. There’s no way to rest on a 15-minute break. Workers want to be able to use the bathroom freely."
Amazon has long made it clear that it is against workers' unionization efforts. A spokesperson told The Post: “As a company, we don’t think unions are the best answer for our employees. Our focus remains on working directly with our team to continue making Amazon a great place to work." The company also appealed ALU's victory in Staten Island, accusing organizers of pressuring workers to vote in favor unionizing. A hearing for Amazon's appeal could be announced sometime this month.
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