Phil Spencer Says Microsoft Supports Employees' Right to Organize and Form Unions - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 26 May 2022 / 2,531 Views
Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer in an internal all-hands meeting with Xbox Game Studios employees said he would recognize the union formed by quality assurance testers at Raven Software once the Activision Blizzard acquisition closes.
He said leadership at Microsoft supports the right of employees' to organize and form unions.
"Linda Norman and I have been spending a lot of time educating myself on unions," said Spencer via Kotaku. "We absolutely support employees' right to organize and form unions."
He added, "Once the deal closes, we would absolutely support [an] employees' organization that's in place. We think it is a right of employees and something that can be a part of a relationship between a company and people who work at the company."
Spencer said that Microsoft does not have a relationship with Communication Workers of America or the Raven Software union, Game Workers Alliance.
Quality assurance testers at Activision Blizzards' Raven Software voted this week to form the first major union in the US video game industry. The union is recognized by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and will negotiate a contract with Activision Blizzard.
Microsoft announced in January of this year it is acquiring Activision Blizzard in a deal with $68.7 billion.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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What company is going to say they aren't?
In the United States, most of them.
Care to give us quotes of these companies publicly saying their are against unions or the right of their employees joining one?
None, because they legally aren’t allowed to
What are people expecting Phil to say?
"No, We don't support unions at all, especially not here at Microsoft!" ?♂️ ???
-CORPORATE SPEAK... NINJA APPROVED-
I don’t know why the snarky comments? It’s good to hear someone in his position say they support unions, particularly in the US, a country which doesn’t really have any kind of strong union support for workers—only 1/10th of the US workforce. The lack of union support for video game developers, outside Sweden and South Korea, is a massive industry-wide problem. The more pressure put on studios to use union labour, the better. A CEO of one of the big 3 supporting unions helps add pressure.
Actually US does have unions. Especially in movie & TV industry but not in anything else.
I said 1/10th of the US workforce was unionized. Who are you arguing against?
He said he support unions? I thought he said he support his employees right to join union if they want.
As long as taxpayers aren't on the hook, I don't givie.
Meh. In the UK all our trains are about to get shut down by these unionised rail workers who are already incredibly well compensated and their industry is already kept alive by the taxpayer.
Most of the time all these unions are any good for is blackmailing the taxpayer
That is because most politicians haven't figured out an effective way to bust up unions in public jobs yet like they have with unions in private jobs which are on the verge of becoming extinct in a lot of countries due to effective union busting efforts by politicians especially in the USA.
If it is a right you can't really say you oppose.
Except it really isn't 27 states have passed right to work laws that actively discourage workers from joining unions and forming unions. Plus, most private jobs don't offer unions.
No. In non-right to work states people are forced to join unions to accept certain jobs. That is why the numbers are higher in those states. In right to work states, the people choose whether or not to join the union. This isn't a matter of opinion. It is the exact definition of right to work.
In states where you are forced to join the union, membership is higher. In states where you are not forced to join the union, membership is lower.
Yeah, nope right to work laws are mainly passed to discourage workers from forming and joining unions and lower union membership overall. But they really are only effective in breaking up unions in private jobs. Since union numbers in public jobs have pretty much stayed the same over the last 30 years while the have rapidly declined in private jobs over the past 30 years a large part due to right to work laws.
You seem to be working under the absence of evidence is evidence of absence look.
I provided more than enough research if you don't believe me do your own research. Also, unions in public jobs have always been stronger than unions in private jobs that is why right to work laws have done little to no damage to public job unions. Also, I am guessing all the down votes I got are from people that work in sucky non-union jobs. But what these people need to realize is their jobs would suck even more if unions never existed. Unions made all jobs better in numerous ways.
Be judgmental all you want for all I care.
Seems like from the 80`s to now the percentage of union workers in USA dropped from 20% to 10% basically, and can't say work conditions dropped to half of what they were nor did the pay.
USA is the 31st in union participation among the 36 biggest of the OCDE, but hardly the work conditions, wage, life standard, etc of its population would be considered low.
Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a readily available number of unions in USA. But I could easily bet it is less than 1% of the number of unions in Brazil ( this link have something like over 16k unions in brazil versus 130 for USA https://www.sokolowski.adv.br/blog/quantidade-absurda-de-sindicatos-no-brasil take it as source if you want or ignore it), still I can assure you that our work conditions, wage, etc are much worse than USA and that the unions haven't really helped at all.
Until like 4 years ago ANY AND EVERY person that had a formal employment (CLT based) needed to pay 1 day of their yearly wage to union (even if not unionized), and still today all wage negotiation, work conditions, etc NEEDS TO BE MADE through union (there is no real right to directly negotiate), and everyone is subject to class contract (even if you aren't unionized).
Also of course with the absurd number of unions (and of course there is alliances for them plus unions for union workers) they are used as political tools for the worst things you can image, including negotiating in advance for strikes together with company owners, having some union leaders stability on their work to the point of being parasites on the company they work for, etc.
So Sorry if I don't have your so good view on Union. Also unless I'm wrong in USA (where public sector unionizing is like 35% versus private sector 6%) private sector have better wages and working conditions doesn't them?
Private sector workers make better money on average than public sector, yes. But, public sector workers have ridiculous job security. It is essentially impossible to get fired from most government jobs, no matter how bad you are at it. Frankly, it's hard for me to respect most people that work for the government because of this.
Similar in Brazil, and that have nothing to do with Unions it is just how our law is made. Unless they commit a heinous crime (and some cases even when they do at most they are forced retired but will full payment and sometimes not even jailtime) they will stay hired forever and always complaining about how little they make (and in Brazil they make like 3-5x more the average of similar functions of private sector).
I'm not a union member now, but I have been in the past. My father was a union organizer and activist for many years. So I've seen this stuff through and through.
There's such a massive history of corruption in unions, both in the US and around the world, that I don't see how anybody with a straight face can say that these are honorable organizations. They're often and wrapped up with organized crime. Members of leadership have been caught squandering members' funds more times than anyone can count.
Public sector unions are literally negotiating against nobody because they fund the politicians that control the public sector. In my opinion, government employees should either be completely prohibited from unionizing, or their should be completely prohibited from doing anything other than collective bargaining. No lobbying their members to vote for certain politicians, no political contributions, or anything. Otherwise you end up with what we have now, where the union controls both sides of the negotiation. That's simply ridiculous, and incredibly unfair to taxpayer. There is literally nobody incentivized to look out for their interests.
In Brazil union is so spread and ridiculous that basically you have the employee union negotiating with employer union =p
