Another division of Activision Blizzard has voted to join the Communications Workers of America (CWA) union.
This morning, more than 400 members of the company's Platform and Technology team, including designers, engineers, testers, localization teams, and Battle.net employees, voted to join the union at several other Blizzard units. Microsoft has reportedly recognized the union.
According to Game developerOrganizing committee members Daniel Weltz, Alex Kohn and Timothy Bailey decided to unionize after colleagues left due to low pay or layoffs, saying that “workplaces will now have to offer certain things to remain competitive with workers.”
“More unions are raising workplace standards across the board,” the group said. “Workplaces will now have to offer certain things to remain competitive with workers. The industry itself also tends to view the people who make video games as disposable…we hope that with more unionization in the industry, we can change that perception.”
“Our culture is our people, and we can’t afford to lose that,” Welz said.
Earlier this year developers working in Blizzard's Story and Franchise Development Division (SDF) also voted to unionize. joining nearly 3,000 Microsoft-owned studio workers who have teamed up with the Communications Workers of America (CWA), including Union workers at Wisconsin-based Raven Software previously filed a grievance against the studio and its parent companies Activision and Microsoft for allegedly refusing to negotiate..
Last week, an open letter attributed to “93 employees and former employees” of Build A Rocket Boy accused studio management of “a long history of disrespect and mistreatment of your employees.” The open letter was accompanied by a message that Members of the Game Workers branch of the Independent Workers of Great Britain (IWGB) have launched legal action over the company's mishandling of redundancies..
