Call Of Duty Maker Reveals Plan To Squash Union Effort

Quality assurance testers at Call of Duty: Warzone studio Raven Software gave management until today, January 25, to voluntarily recognize their newly formed union, Game Workers Alliance. Instead, embattled publisher Activision Blizzard announced tonight it would be forcing a vote with the National Labor Review Board, and called on that vote to include everyone at the studio, a move that would greatly diminish the unionization effort’s chances of success.


Thirty-four staff from Raven’s QA department revealed last week that they were organizing with the Communications Workers of America to unionize, an unprecedented step for developers at a major gaming company. They called on Activision Blizzard–in the midst of similarly unprecedented upheaval following allegations of workplace sexual harassment and discrimination last year, as well as the announcement earlier this month of a $68.7 billion sale to Microsoft–to voluntarily recognize the union, which had supermajority support within the QA department.


“We carefully reviewed and considered the CWA initial request last week and tried to find a mutually acceptable solution with the CWA that would have led to an expedited election process,” Activision Blizzard said in a statement tonight upon rejecting the offer. “Unfortunately, the parties could not reach an agreement.”


We expect that the union will be moving forward with the filing of a petition to the NLRB for an election. If filed, the company will respond formally to that petition promptly. The most important thing to the company is that each eligible employee has the opportunity to have their voice heard and their individual vote counted, and we think all employees at Raven should have a say in this decision.


When a company refuses to voluntarily recognize a union, the organizers behind it must win a majority in an election ratified by the NLRB, a hurdle that would have been easy for Game Workers Alliance to overcome within just the QA department. By requiring “all employees at Raven” to “have a say,” Activision Blizzard is effectively arguing that either the entire studio unionizes or no one does.


Read the full article on Kotaku