While the video game industry is at its best in terms of success, popularity and revenue, the reality of its workforce is worse than ever and those who create and market the titles we enjoy are at their worst. The reaction, at least in the United States, has been with the organization and betting on the union path and although the first attempts resulted in success, this time it was not.
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Proletariat workers decide not to hold union elections
According to information from the Communications Workers of America (CWA) (via Gamesindustry.biz) Activision Blizzard got away with it by creating the necessary conditions to ruin the vote of the workers of the Proletariat studio for the formation of their union. According to the organization that represents union interests, it all originated from the actions of the head of the studio: “unfortunately, the general director of Proletariat, Seth Sivak, chose to follow the example of Activision Blizzard and responded to the desire of the workers to form a union with confrontational tactics. Like many founders, he took workers’ concerns as a personal attack and held a series of meetings that demoralized and disempowered the group, making a free and fair election impossible.”
We are excited to announce that the workers of Proletariat have asked management to voluntarily recognize our union, the Proletariat Workers Alliance. 1/14 pic.twitter.com/JtYTCvJT5X
— Proletariat Workers Alliance (CWA) (@WeArePWA_CWA) December 27, 2022
According to Dustin Yost, a software engineer at Proletariat (via The Gamer), the studio’s CEO turned meetings with workers into a personal matter and accused them of treason, trying to create mixed feelings among employees so they would hesitate to form a team. union or deal directly with studio leadership. Unfortunately, this caused division among the employees and in the end it was decided to cancel the election that would have resulted in Activision Blizzard’s third union.
A few weeks ago, Activision Blizzard was accused by the group of workers seeking to unionize of usurping the name of the leadership of Proletariat to hinder the process. It should be noted that unlike what happened with Raven and Blizzard Albany, this group was the first to have developers and creatives, not just QA staff.
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