For your information, read the\narticle here about the CWA and Game Worker’s organizing campaign. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/business\/technology\/story\/2020-01-07\/major-union-launches-campaign-to-organize-video-game-and-tech-workers?_amp=true<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n By SAM DEAN<\/a>STAFF WRITER \nJAN. 7, 2020 For your information, read the article here about the CWA and Game Worker’s organizing campaign. https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/business\/technology\/story\/2020-01-07\/major-union-launches-campaign-to-organize-video-game-and-tech-workers?_amp=true By SAM DEANSTAFF WRITER JAN. 7, 2020 The last two years have witnessed a wave of walkouts, petitions and other workplace actions at video … Continue reading
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\nThe last two years have witnessed a wave of walkouts, petitions and other\nworkplace actions at video game and tech companies.
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\nBut despite this swell\nin labor activism,<\/a> employees at no major video game studios and only a\nhandful of tech offices have formally voted to form or join a union.
\nA new campaign launched Tuesday by one of the nation\u2019s largest labor unions \u2014\nand spearheaded by one of the leading video game industry activists in Southern\nCalifornia \u2014 aims to change that.
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\nThe Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (CODE for short) is a new project of\nthe Communications Workers of America aimed specifically at unionizing video\ngame and tech companies.
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\nIt grew out of conversations between the CWA and Game Workers Unite, a\ngrass-roots organization that sprang up in 2018 to push for wall-to-wall\nunionization of the $43-billion video game industry, alongside conversations\nwith organizers across the larger tech industry.
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\nSeparate from the new initiative, the Toronto chapter of GWU has also signed a\nformal partnership agreement with CWA to work on organizing in the area. (CWA\nis also the parent union of the NewsGuild, which represents workers at the L.A.\nTimes and most major newspapers in the country.)
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\n\u201cWe\u2019ve been watching the amazing organizing of workers across the industry,\u201d\nsaid Tom Smith, CWA\u2019s lead organizer. \u201cAnd workers themselves reached out to us\nwhile doing that amazing self-organizing, and said, \u2018Can we do this in\npartnership with the CWA?\u2019\u201d
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\nThe union declined to specify how much money it was putting behind the new\neffort, but has put two organizers on payroll to lead the push with support\nfrom dozens of CWA staff members across the country.
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\nOne of the new staffers, Wes McEnany, comes from a more traditional labor\norganizing career with Boston-area unions and the labor-backed campaign for a\n$15 minimum wage. CWA also hired Emma Kinema, who co-founded Game Workers Unite\nand organized the Los Angeles and Orange County chapters of the group.
\nThe dedicated staff and national ambition set the CODE project apart from other\nefforts to organize tech workers, such as the United Steelworkers-backed\nPittsburgh Assn. of Tech Professionals, which successfully unionized Google subcontractors<\/a> in September.
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\n\u201cIn my experience self-organizing in the game industry, people are very\nbottlenecked by the lack of resources and lack of legal know-how and a lack of\nfunding \u2014 it\u2019s very tough,\u201d Kinema said. \u201cThe decades of experience and\nresources that come from partnering with an organization like CWA can take it\nto the next level.\u201d
\nWorking conditions in the video game industry have brought the question of\nunionization to the forefront in recent years. At a 2019 video game developer conference,<\/a> the industry\u2019s\npractice of making employees work 100-hour weeks for months on end to finish a\ngame in time for the preset delivery date, often without extra pay \u2014 a practice\nknown as \u201ccrunch\u201d \u2014 came under fire in discussions among workers, as did the\nrolling layoffs that come when companies staff up and shed jobs to fit cyclical\nproduction schedules.
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\nAnd in the tech industry writ large, workplace actions have extended beyond\nconcerns over bread-and-butter issues such as pay and severance to questions of\nethics and culture. The worldwide Google walkouts<\/a>, and the walkout at Los Angeles game studio Riot Games<\/a> that\nfollowed, grew out of employee demands to end the practice of forcing workers\ninto private arbitration instead of allowing them to sue over claims of sexual harassment and workplace discrimination<\/a>.
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\nOther actions, such as the walkout at online furniture seller Wayfair<\/a> and a number of petitions<\/a> filed by workers at Amazon,\nMicrosoft and Salesforce, have pushed back against corporate decisions to work\nwith Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the Department of Defense. And\nIrvine-based Activision Blizzard faced internal and external protests<\/a> in late 2019\nafter it punished a professional gamer who made statements supporting the\npro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
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\nThe organizers behind the new effort see the push for better working conditions\nand corporate ethics as one and the same.
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\n\u201cI think it\u2019s a false dichotomy to frame the activism of a lot of tech workers\naround the impact that the work they do has on society as something other than\na fundamental working condition,\u201d Smith said. \u201cFor a lot of folks, that\u2019s what\nled them to do this work in the first place, and people are feeling a\ndisconnect between their personal values and what they\u2019re seeing every day in\ntheir working lives.\u201d
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\nIn December, CWA filed official charges<\/a> against Google with the\nNational Labor Relations Board on behalf of five Google workers who were fired\nin what they say was retaliation for their organizing at the tech giant.
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\nThe new project charts a path away from organizing video game workers along the\nHollywood craft union model. SAG-AFTRA has represented video game voice actors\nfor years, and called a strike in 2017<\/a> over pay and royalty\nstructures. But CWA largely follows the industrial union model, which organizes\nentire companies at once rather than splitting workers who perform different\njobs into specialized unions.
\nSmith, for his part, said that CWA could accommodate craft-based organizing if\nthat\u2019s what video game or tech workers want, emphasizing that the workers will\nultimately decide how to organize. But Kinema saw the decision to join CWA in\nstarker terms.
\n\u201cWe believe workers are strongest when they\u2019re together in one shop in one\nunion, so the disciplines can\u2019t be pitted against each other\u2014none of that\u2019s\ngood for the workers,\u201d Kinema said. \u201cI think in games and tech the wall-to-wall\nindustrial model is the best fit.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"