It’s no coincidence that these are both Microsoft-owned studios. During its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the company signed a neutrality agreement, agreeing to work "collaboratively" with workers who want to organise. This protected all of its employees in their unionisation efforts, letting them freely communicate with one another.
“Bethesda just squeaked in, barely in front of us,” says Samuel Cooper, a senior producer at Blizzard. “We actually thought it was going to go the other way. They sent us a little ‘congratulations’ note on winning the friendly race, and then we had to turn it around and send one back when it turns out they just barely slid in there.”
We're the World of Warcraft Gamemakers Guild: the first wall-to-wall union at Blizzard! We're thrilled to include WoW's QA, Art, Sound, Design, Engineering and Production voices for a democratized workplace. At this crucial moment in games, we stand together as one. For Azeroth! pic.twitter.com/ieewW5KFuI
— WoW Gamemaker's Guild (@WoWGG_CWA) July 24, 2024
Blizzard workers communicating with one another - let alone another studio entirely - about organising like this wasn’t as easy before the Microsoft acquisition, Cooper tells me. He says things have “absolutely” improved since then, as bosses have agreed to allow workers to be open about their pro-union leanings.
“Legally, a company can't retaliate against you for organising. But that doesn't make it any less scary,” says Cooper. “It becomes un-scary when you see hundreds of your fellow co-workers out there, side by side with you. And neutrality allowed us to be very visible on campus.
“We've got Zoom backgrounds. We've got pins. We've had CWA [Communications Workers of America] representatives and members from other video game unions like Sega and ZeniMax on the campus, talking to folks.”
This sounds like a far cry from the workplace atmosphere of the Activision Blizzard that was described in numerous allegations of abuse and discrimination that came out in a 2021 lawsuit. That lawsuit has since been settled with a $56 million payout, but outside of the legal ramifications, it was also the spark that ignited unionisation efforts throughout Activision Blizzard.
“This wave of activism among my coworkers definitely started with that,” says Cooper. “There was this series of walkouts, [and] those weren't run through a union communication channel or anything. They were relatively spontaneous. It was a bunch of us saying, ‘Hey, we don't feel like things we're hearing from the company in response to this represent our voice, and we don't want to be misconstrued, so we're going to use our own voice’.
“The way that was able to come together so quickly without any prior laying of groundwork really became a proof of concept. We knew we could do that. We could make big changes together, and we knew we had a lot of shared values to rally around.”
Thanks to changes since then, if these issues were to arise again, workers have the right to union representation in meetings, something that Cooper feels will work well alongside changes made by Blizzard itself.
“Since that time, Blizzard has made efforts, and that's great,” he says. “I do think that I have strong hopes for the future, for how unionisation will further protect workers.
“There's two sides to attacking the problems of discrimination and harassment in a company. One comes from the corporation itself, and I'm certain Blizzard can represent the things they've done towards that. And the other comes from the organised employees who stand with each other, and make sure that we're all protected.”
Now that the union has been recognised, negotiations with management can begin. But in the time since the Activision Blizzard allegations first came to light, even more issues have come to the forefront of the conversation, and none is more existential than the ever-looming threat of mass layoffs. Cooper believes that unionisation will help Blizzard workers avoid this, or at the very least, reduce the harm.
"We could make big changes together, and we knew we had a lot of shared values to rally around.”
“I know directly of unions in this industry that already exist, that have reduced layoffs that happened this year [by] negotiating with their leadership,” he says. “It's absolutely doable.”
Specifically, he says that unions are able to vet the information a company provides about layoffs and question whether they are actually needed to save money. They can force management to explore other avenues for cost-cutting before it comes to job losses. But that’s far from the only issue that they’re raising at the negotiating table.
“It's one thing to say we'd all like higher wages. That's not controversial for workers. We live in Irvine, we live in Boston. These places are not cheap.” He acknowledges that he isn’t sure what this compensation will look like, but at least now, it’s something the team can discuss.
“We'll be surveying to find out how we want to prioritise,” he says. “Things like our work-from-home policy, where we had folks who, post-Covid, moved to Seattle and bought a home, and now they're expected to be back [in the office] three days a week. We'll talk through that as a group and figure out what we want to see.
“I think we're going to see a huge change in our conditions,” he continues. “I think we'll see improvements to how we work, improvements to how we're compensated for it, and also just the confidence and satisfaction of knowing that you had a voice in weighing in on what, what your work relationship is going to be like. [...] That's not been common in the industry. Usually, what's out there is out there.“
Cooper is hopeful that Blizzard fans will see the benefits, as they particularly focus on improving conditions for quality assurance workers on games like World of Warcraft.
“This game's been around for 20 years. We've got a real vested interest in keeping knowledgeable, talented people with deep connections across the company,” says Cooper. “I've been at this company for 15 years. That doesn't happen if you hate a place and that's true of a bunch of us.
“I think unions are good for everyone, not just for workers, but also for the company, also for the customers. Happy people and well-compensated people, they stay longer, they gain more expertise, they make better products.”
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Source: https://www.thegamer.com/blizzard-world-of-warcraf-union-formed-allegations-layoffs/
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