The management of Raven Software, subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, developed call of Duty games, has reportedly tried to persuade its employees to vote against unionization. Corresponding The Washington PostRaven management sent out messages and held town hall meetings ahead of the May 20 election date.
During a meeting on April 26, the company’s management indicated that unionizing could not only hamper game development, but could also affect promotions and benefits. After this meeting The post says management emailed employees with a more direct message: “Please vote no.” However, Raven employees the publication spoke to said the company’s efforts had been ineffective and they still had voted to organize.
This saga began late last year when Raven suddenly fired around a third of the group’s QA testers after months of promising better pay. Activision Blizzard workers staged a week-long strike in support of QA staff, at the same time as union organizing efforts began. Since then, Activision has been trying to dissuade workers from forming a union.
Chris Arends, VP of QA at Activision, reportedly told team members in a Slack meeting that a “union doesn’t do anything to help us produce world-class games and the negotiation process isn’t usually quick, often the Flexibility can be reduced and controversial, leading to negative publicity.” However, the National Labor Relations Board gave quality assurance auditors permission to hold a union vote in April, and workers sent in their ballots in the mail last month Activision, we’ll soon find out: On May 23, the NLRB will count the ballots via video conference.
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