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Electronic Arts Facing Possible Class Action Lawsuit
As a follow-up to yesterday's story about a frustrated EA employee's spouse, several readers wrote in to report that EA is now facing a possible class action lawsuit from disgruntled employees. Besides the Gamespot coverage, Kotaku has a discussion of it as well. To add to the "frustrated EA worker" momentum, a former employee named Joe Straitiff has posted about his experiences as well. From his post: "So I'm posting under my real name -- you have to stand up to this type of thing or it will continue. And every company will become EA so that can compete... Remember, you can't spell ExploitAtion without EA."
First of all, everyone always needs to keep in mind that HR is not there for the benefit of the employees. That's what every company tells you, but the truth is, HR's job is to protect the corperation. Never trust an HR employee to look out for your best interest. That being said, EA's HR department has obviously failed them by allowing things to get to this point. They should have kept pay and hours legal within the bounds of the state law. And did anyone else notice the featured game on the gamespot article? Sims2 by EA.
DeviantArt Page
NSFWFrom the article:
So the programmers at EA are still out of luck with respect to their own lawsuit. Whether they're exempt or not is probably the crux of the matter.
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I have saved some of my Starcraft replays here
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In a completely free market (which the US is not), that would be true. That's why there are federal and state laws to protect workers from these sorts of situations. While we may not know conclusively for a while, it looks like there's substantial evidence that EA is violating some of those laws. By all means, boycott their products, but there should be some other way of checking this behavior (such as this lawsuit, although there may be other approaches as well).
Especially given the turnover rate, it seems like the only reason EA gets so many people who want to work for them is because they are a big name in a popular industry, and they lie to people about what the jobs entail. Hopefully the lawsuit, even if it fails, will bring more attention to EA's behavior, lowering the available pool for new hires, so that they are eventually forced to change their practices.
I am the man with no sig!
Just some examples:
I thought the japanese had the highest life expectancy.
This says they are #1 on the list while the US is #24...
A business (the movie business), with an unstable labor pool (infinite supply of people with stars in their eyes), short project lifespans (1-2 years), ...
yet there is a Screen Actors' Guild.
disputed
My brother recently quit EA. He's a character animator, and worked on the Harry Potter series. He was recruited directly out of Classical animation at Sheridan college (Canada) and worked for them for 5 years in England. After lots of late nights and weekends he decided he needed a change.
When he left they gave him a 6 month severance package so that he could find a new job. If you know anybody looking for a charactor animator trained in Maya drop him a line. His website (www.ray-guns.com) has some animations he did as well as sketches.
The best solution is to not get involved with a company lik this in the first place. When you're going through the hiring process, talk to current employees and ask them what's good and bad about the company. If you're in the same situation I was in a few years ago, an evil corporation may come in and buy you out from a great employer. In those cases, you have to try your best to keep a positive attitude and make job searching a full time job. Most people that bitch about not being able to find a job, just aren't putting in a real effort. Posting your resume on monster.com and firing off resumes to job openings on dice.com is nothing more than a token effort. You have to act like a door to door life insurance salesman and do everything you can to land a better job. If you need to move to a bigger city, do it! Save up about 2 months of living expense money and move. Put most of your stuff in storage if it will help temporarily. Once you get to the city, spend the first month selling yourself like a pimp with an expensive crack habit. Hell, you could hit up managerial looking people at Starbucks if it will help. If you really can't land a job in that initial month, get any old night job to live off of and make finding another job your day job. If you still can't land anything, maybe you're in the wrong field or have some personality issues that employers are seeing. Applicants that shine through the rest because of their own drive to get their foot in the door already have a lead on the rest. If you're doing this to say, 100 companies at a time, at least one will pay off.
-Lucas
IANAL, but I did a little research on this when I left my short unpleasant stint as a 'manager' at EA, so I could pass it along to the people I refused to victimize. I don't believe that any of them followed through, however.
According to California state employment law, the MANAGERS can be fined for requiring unpaid overtime in violation of the California employment laws.
California Labor Code
558. (a) Any employer or other person acting on behalf of an employer who violates, or causes to be violated, a section of this chapter or any provision regulating hours and days of work in any order of the Industrial Welfare Commission shall be subject to a civil penalty as follows:
(1) For any initial violation, fifty dollars ($50) for each underpaid employee for each pay period for which the employee was underpaid in addition to an amount sufficient to recover underpaid wages.
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!
"Except that the game dev industry doesn't really pay all that well relative to other software development jobs. Because everyone and their cousin wants to develop games. They'll burn you out like a backyard BBQ because they know they can just replace you."
There's a gap between "wants to" and "are able to". Desire isn't enough, hardwork and talent are. Since that's a much smaller crowd. Word gets around quicker that so-and-so is treating people badly. There are other companies to work for, and the nice thing about game development is that you can plop a company down anywere (Id is in Texas for example). A bunch of talented people can form their own company anytime they feel like it.
"And all the while they dangle the high salaries of the Top Tier Talent as the crack-laced carrot to keep you slaving away."
That's every programmers "carrot".
Seriously, quitting is almost certainly painless to EA, as they can get other people to do the job pretty easily. Just send an email saying that you're only going to work 50 hours a week, and stick to it, and see what happens.
Because firing people has consequences. I run a small visual effects production company, and we hire freelance people as we get projects, for the length of the project. The State of California doesn't see it that way, though, and to the state it appears that we hire and fire people at a high rate.
This causes our unemployment insurance rate to be insanely high -- we pay about 10% of our employee's earnings into the state unemployment insurance system. Now, we consider that the cost of doing business -- we could even avoid it if we wanted to by various means but it does seem to us a reasonable price to pay for the privilege of hiring people just when we need them.
But, if EA's unemployment insurance rate skyrocketed, it'd hit them right in the wallet. They might even do something about it.
Just a suggestion. Any EA exec reading this (Hi!) can thank me privately -- as you must know, long term, that these "crunch" policies will destroy the company.
Thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Programmers line up at the door to EA (and other studios) to get jobs in that industry. They jump through the interviews and HR hoops. They work as 9-5 institutional programmers, government contractors, MCSEs, or anything, hoping to score an opportunity to make games. Not everyone wants this, of course, but believe it or not, thousands and thousands of people look forward to working extremely long hours to make video games. Let those people apply and work the jobs. If everyone walked out of EA today because of unfulfilled expectations, their desks would be filled in fairly short order by people who want those jobs for the guts and glory. The unionizers amongst you may call these people 'scabs', I suppose.
Aspiring game programmers write games in their spare time, graphics demos, etc. and put these things together in a portfolio to apply for a paid job as a game programmer. I know; I did this, I write code, and I hire other coders. Show me another industry where you'll work for hundreds and hundreds of hours on your own time to craft a software demo to impress a potential banking/government/oil&gas employer...
You could argue that programmers are lined up to work there because economic times are hard for the North American programmer right now. If you've been watching the games industry for the last 15 years or so, you'd know that programmers have been begging to work at video game studios (large and small) constantly, through boom times and bust. Not so true of other (less glorious?) programming specialties.
During the late nineties boom times, I can assure you that the hours worked at EA Sports were brutal. I was there, coding like a monkey, and it was just fine. We all could have left; there were lots of opportunities to make more money in software for less hours. So... Different economic climate now, but what's constant? What's constant over the decades is the fact that plenty of people are willing to work unusually long hours to make video games (and other software). If game programmers see no glory in that sacrifice, why on earth did they get into video games?
"They shouldn't have to work so much" is mostly what I'm hearing. Not an argument. They don't have to. If EA is breaking laws, nail them to the wall. But if they're matching a certain personality type and inner drive to really hard jobs, and there's a clear pattern of people freely willing to leave easier positions to code games, well, then chalk one up for EA finding a good business model.
The other thing to consider, is that things have an end to them, and jobs don't need to last for 20 years. Some jobs simply can't because of their demands. There are jobs so physically and mentally demanding that they're simply not life-long jobs. Maybe game programming is like that.
I worked for a company stocking shelves. It's not admirable, and I take responsibility for it. However, they were a union store. I earned minimum wages, so that means after union dues, I earned less than minimum wages. The union sure wasn't too helpful to me. The supervisor was verbally abusive too, in my opinion.
I hate unions a lot.
testing out my trending skills
Let them. Using fear of outsourcing to control people is a bluff that needs to be called. I think they would have done so already if they could. Everyone assumes that third world countries are populated with slaves but it just isn't true. Many of these countries are socialist and employess have more rights that in the U.S.
I know someone who moved his company to Mexico, expecting a windfall profit hiring cheap employees. Well, it turned out that labor laws in Mexico are much more strict that in the U.S. and it cost him more than it would have here.
For example, when you fire someone down there you have to give them 3 months pay PLUS a christmas bonus. I'm not joking. While he did pay less hourly for people, he got raped by lawsuits, no count good for nothing slackers that had to be paid 3 months pay to be fired, and employees stealing equipment so that in the end it just wasn't worth it.
Also, many managers are hands on people and just can't manage a remote project. I've managed outsource teams myself and most of the code had to be re-written by local talent.
So let them outsource. I dare them.
There are minimum federal standards on such things, but it varies somewhat by state. The only way to really know what your rights are is to consult a local attorney who knows labor law.
In general, there are three categories of employees: hourly, salaried, and salaried/exempt.
Hourly employees get paid for the work they actually do, at overtime rates for work over (at the federal level) 40 hours a week (in some states, like California, also for work over 8 hours a day, regardless of weekly total). There are other rules, too, and the details do vary considerably by state.
Salaried employees get paid per day or week (or sometimes, per month). They get paid their full salary regardless of number of hours worked (though they can be docked for missing full days of work, if there is a policy of doing so). If they they qualify for overtime (over 8/over 40, or whatever), they get overtime.
Salaraied/exempt employees get paid a set rate, but are exempt from overtime requirements.
It is not entirely up to the employer which category an employee fall in, despite what many employers seem to believe. Only certain types of employees are allowed to be salaried exempt, even if the employees would willingly be classified that away. Again, the rules vary by state, but in general, only management and executive staff, and in many states, state regulated professionals (like doctors and lawyers, but not programmers) can be classified as salaried exempt. The key criteria is that the employee must either be licensed by the state, or must have discretion in how he does his job, and spend the majority of his time supervising others.
One dodge that many employers try is to make professionals who are not supposed to be salaried exempt "contractors." They do not hire the employee, they contract with an indepenent contractor to provide certain services. This, too, is badly abused, because, to be a contractor (and thus exempt from overtime laws), the contractor must have complete control over how he does his job, and the hours he works. There are other requirements, as well, but those are the major ones. Even something as simple as requiring the contractor to use tools provided by the employer can make them an employee, and thus subject to overtime laws. Many software companies, including Microsoft, have been burned badly for abusing contractor status.
Again, all this is governed by a mininum set of federal standards, but many states give employees additional rights, so all of it varies by state. Again, if it really matters to you, consult a local attorney who specializes in labor law.
But, in general, if you are not licensed by the state, and do not spend most of your time supervising others, and have little discretion in how you do your job, you should probably be getting overtime.
I recall at SIGGRAPH, say, 3 years ago? My buddy and I, highly interested in new game technologies, stopped by the EA booth. My buddy lingered. He talked for quite a bit to the rep there. The rep had stated that EA has the highest divorce rate of any company, and they were proud of it. They could suck the souls out of their coders. They would eagerly replace the older coders (late 20s?) with the young kids of the street if the kids knew there things.
The place sounds like occupational hell, it has for years, glad it's getting the (geek) press finally.
Also, corporate revenues would be much higher without paying 50% or more to tax, so they could afford to higher more people etc...
Many of the wealthiest corportations pay no tax except for the matching Social Security contribution for U.S. employees. When they outsource those jobs, they pay nothing. So cutting taxes for corporations is a meaningless excercise -- half of zero is still zero. Some companies now appear to have negative tax rates, i.e., corporate welfare.
I have worked in both the US and the UK and I paid more in direct taxes (Federal+State+fica+casdi) and tax related expenses in California than I ever did in the UK. Admittedly the indirect taxes go some way to balancing this out BUT in CA I then had to pay extra for inferior health care and way more to educate my children.