600 Activision QA Workers Unionize, Microsoft Voluntarily Recognizes the Union - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 08 March 2024 / 3,796 Views
Activision quality assurance (QA) employees in Austin, Texas, Eden Prairie, Minnesota, and El Segundo, California have voted to unionize with the Communications Workers of America (CWA), announced the CWA. Microsoft has voluntarily recognized the union.
The final vote ended up with 390 "yes" votes to unionize and eights "no" votes. The union will cover around 600 Activision QA employees.
"Something we organized around is that in this industry, QA and customer service are the lowest paid jobs, and often looked down upon either within the industry or by customers," Activision QA tester and organizing committee member Kara Fannon told Polygon.
"It’s easy for people to say to QA, ‘Oh, I found a bug,’ even though we logged tens of thousands of bugs. So why is QA [unionizing], as opposed to other people in the industry? We have the weakest protections currently and we want to make sure that we’re strong so our work can keep going the way it is — we want to be supporting these games and working really hard on them."
Activision Quality Assurance United - CWA members joins other unions at Microsoft Gaming, including Blizzard Albany, Raven Software, and ZeniMax.
ZeniMax Workers United was the biggest gaming union in the US with over 300 members, which has now been surpassed by the around 600 at the new Activision union. There are over 1,000 video game employees at Microsoft now represented by the CWA.
"Microsoft continues to keep its commitment to let workers decide for themselves whether they want a union," said Communications Workers of America President Claude Cummings Jr. "Time and again, other big companies in the industry have made the decision to undermine and attack their own employees when they join together to form a union. Microsoft's choice will strengthen its corporate culture and ability to serve its customers and should serve as a model for the industry."
QA Tester and member of Activision Quality Assurance United-CWA Kara Fannon added, "My coworkers and I are excited to announce our union today as members of Activision Quality Assurance United-CWA. We wanted to see improvements in the workplace, including higher wages and getting more career opportunities, and so were eager to unionize. Quality Assurance roles are described as a way to get your foot in the door in the video game industry, but the truth is, at best, we get the internal job posting before the public does. We’re ready to grow our careers here and believe that having a strong union contract will set workers and the company up for success."
Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of HR Legal at Microsoft Amy Pannoni stated, "We maintained our commitment to remain neutral during the organizing campaign, and following this vote, we recognize the Communications Workers of America (CWA) as the bargaining representative for the Activision Publishing Central Quality Assurance employees. We look forward to continuing our positive labor management relationship."
Microsoft in 2022 signed a labor neutrality agreement with the CWA that states Microsoft must remain neutral in all interactions with unions.
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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The US hates unions and its people love defending corps, 32 comments are not surprising in the slightest.
Good, hope even more follow suit.
I never understood why the US hates unions so much when unions can help to balance the indifference between employers and employees so much. How on earth are higher wages and higher job stability a bad thing? Please enlighten me.
Non-union shops generally don't do anything about bad employees either until the employee does something that might get them sued. Bad non-union employees are protected by managerial incompetence/apathy or blatant nepotism, and the good workers in non-union shops have even less recourse against them. I live in the militantly anti-union South and some of the employees in this state are almost too dumb to live. Literally, in some cases.
Unions might be necessary but they also bring a lot of negative aspects of their own. I learned a lot by working as a contractor and then a Union member in the same facility.
Union culture, for one. An entire contract company got dismissed because of missing materials. Turns out that it was an employee and EVERYONE in that department knew it but Union people won't rat on Union people. When I joined, I had someone straight up tell me that no one would say a word to management if they saw me walk out the door with a new PC.
Union politics, for another. We had a situation where new employees got absolutely and completely screwed by the older employees who were close to retirement. In exchange for current employee retirement benefits being protected, they agreed to let the company gut the pay scale for employees who hadn't been hired yet--and they, of course, were grandfathered in to the old pay scale. The end result was that you eventually had people in the EXACT SAME position who were making HALF as much money. They were also accused of rushing it through with an "emergency vote" without informing everyone.
Oh, and the red tape. We were told that we couldn't change a light bulb in one area or maintenance would file a Grievance. We had to wait until they felt like it. Basically, Union members treated contractors like garbage. I've literally seen Union employees make contractors wait for HOURS for no reason.
The high cost of Union employees, and the fact that they have so many restrictions on what they can be made to do, has created a situation where companies hire less employees and instead use cheap contract labor with much worse working conditions and protections.
That's just a few of the things I witnessed. There are TONS of things not to like about Unions. They might be important in keeping companies in check but they sure as hell aren't all unicorns and rainbows.
As an American that has been a member of a union in a heavily unionized industry, and son of a union organizer in a different industry, I can tell you why I often find myself opposing unionization.. In practice, what I've found is that unions mostly serve to protect bad employees, stop good employees from moving up the ladder and making more money as quickly as they would in a merit-based organization, and make it harder for companies to respond to the market. None of those things are good. The only real positives that I've seen to unions are for people that either aren't interested in or aren't capable of doing a good job.
Then there's the very significant, almost constant history of corruption in unions. Many of these organizations exist largely to line the pockets of fat cats at the expense of union members. Even the ones that are doing a relatively good job by their members are often rife with embezzlement, and unethical kickbacks and the like.
I'm not anti-union, insofar as I think anybody has a right to organize for anything they want. But, it's unlikely that I would ever vote to unionize in any industry, and I would counsel others not to do it. I just think that the negatives outweigh the positives, on average..
Well this is good news for a change
Bet you, making a load of their friends redundant recently helped this vote go through. Good, more game workers need to do this, especially in the QA departments. EDIT: this news article has some opinions I did not expect, especially at a time when thousands in the industry are losing their jobs.
Karl Marx is happy.
Not all his ideas were bad.
When millions of people die that's a lot of bad ideas.
Yes but not necessarily all his bad ideas.
Of course not. Just those trying to make his ideas work. Let's see what you'll say when it's your life on the line. I'm sure you're willing to put your own life on the line to prove a point, right?
Well hard to blame Marx if someone twists his ideas into something he might have never meant them to be.
Have ever occurreded to you that his ideas were twisted from the start? You even said "he might have never meant them to be". What if he meant it? You didn't answer: are willing to put your life on the line to prove a point?
If he meant it, he's a terrible person. That's an 'if'.
A lot of people died because of your "if". In my opinion that's reason enough for you to think about it.
Surely millions of deaths cannot be attributed to Marx. He was just one man.
Ideas kill.
Ideas kill a lot.
On their own, they do not.
Here's an idea: a bomb so powerful, it can wipe out all life on Earth.
Now behold as this idea on its own kills absolutely no one.
Still waiting for you to tell me if you would put your life on the line for those "ideas".
What ideas?
Curious if you would hold the Bible to this standard
Interesting. Some writers believe leftism is a religious obsession.
This type of dodge is typical of someone who is aware of how weak their original argument is, and is trying to change the subject so that they are not forced to concede a point.
This type of behavior is why I don’t really waste my time debating politics on the internet anymore (and also why I will be ignoring whatever banal and irrelevant quip you are sure to follow this with). These discussions always devolve into a tired series of rhetorical gotchas that are intellectually dishonest and boring
What really gets me is when people, like yourself, who have such clearly weak intellectual foundations for their world views act so confidently in their opinions on them. Like a toddler proudly declaring the earth is flat, you proudly declare “leftism” is like a religion. You probably couldn’t provide a definition for half these words that would be satisfactory at a high school level.
You already wasted your time. Funny how you didn't notice it. A lot btw. Besides, you're the one who brought the religion card. That's boring. I just had to lower myself to your level. You sound kinda butthurt though.
Yes, Unions are great! Capitalism has killed hundreds of thousands of people, let's restrict capitalisms ability to treat people badly.
Union strong im Local 329 UE
Boooooo!
Not boo it’s a iron foundry that don’t give a damn about us it’s for our Saftey and fair wage though I will admit it breeds some lazy workers sometimes that annoys me
