Activision Blizzard will begin negotiations with QA testers union at Raven Software - The Verge
Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick said the company has recognized the union formed by QA testers at Raven Software, a subsidiary that works on its Call of Duty games. They won an election to form a union last month.
After Activision Blizzard refused to voluntarily recognize the union formed by QA testers at Raven Software — a subsidiary that works on the Call of Duty games — the testers went through the election process and voted to form a union last month. Now, Activision Blizzard’s current CEO Bobby Kotick told employees in a letter that the company recognizes the union and will “engage in good faith negotiations to enter into a collective bargaining agreement.”
Getting here comes after news of layoffs late last year, followed by an employee walkout and a five-week strike. There was also the part where Activision Blizzard engaged in tactics that smelled of union busting, like suddenly converting other testers in the company to full-time jobs with benefits and pay bumps that the Raven testers didn’t get as well as spreading their roles out across the company, which is just one small part of employee backlash that has occurred within Activision Blizzard over the last year.
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The rest of the text in Kotick’s letter is below. After the vote passed with 19 out of 22 votes (two ballots were challenged), the company was out of easy options to continue avoiding this. Still, an alternate route included the one Amazon is taking in response to a union vote in one of its warehouses, where it is contesting the vote, in a process that may delay the start of negotiations for years.
Meanwhile, Microsoft, which is in the process of attempting to acquire Activision Blizzard, recently publicly adopted principles for employee organizing. The principles included a line saying, “We are dedicated to maintaining a close relationship and shared partnership with all our employees, including those represented by a union” — without specifically guaranteeing much.
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