Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick attends the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference on July 8, 2022 in Sun Valley, Idaho.
Kevin Dietsch | News from Getty Images | Getty Images
A group of software testers at Activision Blizzard formed the company’s second union in the months before Microsoft is expected to complete its nearly $69 billion acquisition of the video game publisher.
Employees at the company’s Blizzard Entertainment division in Albany, New York are working with the Communications Workers of America to assemble their own group in the Game Workers Alliance, formed by employees elsewhere at Activision.
In a series of tweets dubbed GWA Albany, the group said it wants competitive compensation with transparency, better benefits, clearer processes for communicating about workplace issues and an improved work-life balance. According to the CWA, the unit consists of 20 people.
While labor movements in the tech industry, where wages and benefits tend to be higher than in other parts of the economy, have historically been rare, they have recently become more prominent. Small groups of workers at Alphabet and Apple have taken steps to organize, and in April, Amazon workers on Staten Island in New York became the first group to vote to organize at one of the company’s US facilities.
At Activision, work demands are intensifying following incidents of alleged sexual misconduct at the company, which CEO Bobby Kotick reportedly knew about for years without informing the board. Microsoft first contacted Activision about a possible connection the same week the report surfaced, according to a regulatory filing about the deal.
An Activision spokesman said the company will respond to the Albany union’s petition to the National Labor Relations Board.
“We deeply respect the legal rights of all employees to make their own decisions about whether or not to join a union,” the spokesman said. “We believe that a direct relationship between the company and its employees is the most productive relationship.”
Regarding the allegations against Kotick, a separate spokesman said that based on an external review, the board found no evidence that senior executives “ever intentionally ignored or attempted to downplay the instances of gender-based harassment that have occurred and.” were reported”.
Union activity at Activision, whose Blizzard divisions produce games like Diablo, Overwatch and World of Warcraft, dates back to late 2021. Testers from Raven Software, the studio behind the popular Call of Duty game series, called off a strike at the company’s Wisconsin headquarters following a reported contractor layoff. The testers had previously been told that their salary would increase said a former worker on twitter.
By January, a small group of testers, in partnership with the CWA, had formed a union called the Game Workers Alliance. Two months later, the CWA alleged that an Activision executive “threatened employees not to discuss issues related to wages, hours, and working conditions on Slack.” But the workers voted to unionize.
After the vote, Kotick said the company would engage in good faith talks to reach a collective bargaining agreement for Raven testers.
“While initial employment contracts may take time to be finalized, we will meet CWA leaders at the negotiating table and work towards an agreement that supports the success of all of our employees and further reinforces our commitment to create the best, friendliest and most inclusive in the industry workplace and enhances our ability to deliver world-class games for our players,” Kotick said in a letter to US employees last month.
Microsoft has taken a more accessible approach to work organization.
Brad Smith, Microsoft vice chairman and president, said in a blog post in June that “we are committed to creative and collaborative approaches with unions when employees seek to exercise their rights and a specific unionization proposal is presented to Microsoft.” He said the company doesn’t believe efforts to prevent employees from forming or joining unions are beneficial.
CLOCK: Microsoft says it is open to working with unions