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."

Comments

A few thoughts

[slusich]

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.

Corporate Politics

[null etc.]

It's a real shame this guy hasn't been around the block a few times with regards to management. There are some very clear actions he could have taken to ensure that the noose wasn't just around his neck, but also around the next of his supervisor and HR contact.

Just some examples:

• Get all job requirements in writing or email. If your boss asks you to complete something, send him an email asking him to verify the scope and priority of the work to be performed. If necessary, use clauses such as "Do you agree that until completion of this task, this task takes precedence over all other requests made of me, unless otherwise communicated by you?"
• Get all reprimands in writing or email, and get as much clarification as possible. If your boss reprimands you verbally, follow up with an email asking him if your interpretation of his reprimand is correct. Ask him to describe or verify the actions that will be required to resolve the issue.
• Follow up on every contradiction. If your boss says "good job" one day, and yells at you the next, ask him via email to clarify the situation so that you can take steps to avoid repeating the situation. This is especially important if you need to represent yourself as a dutiful employee during future lawsuits.
• Ask to be educated about the formal HR policies for reprimand. Many companies, in order to avoid lawsuits, have clearly defined policies for reprimanding employees. These include written warning, signed by the employee; mandatory HR sessions upon reprimand; follow-up performance evaluations, etc. Some companies get lazy and stop following the policies they've defined. If so, your lawsuit will be much stronger! Try to get all reprimands processes as clearly and officially as possible. This will require your employer to make clear and rational decisions regarding your reprimand, unless they want to risk facing an unlawful termination suit.
• Save all email. During a lawsuit, your lawyer will need emails that may be years old, in order to make certain cases such as "this company promoted an atmosphere of such and such, as evidenced by these emails going as far back as..." I know of a lawsuit in which an employee saved his spam, and used that as evidence that the company wasn't serious about enforcing "corporate use only" policies.

Re:Former EA Employees?

[rogueuk]

I thought the japanese had the highest life expectancy.

This says they are #1 on the list while the US is #24...

You'd think that about Hollywood, wouldn't you

[Sagarian]

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.

Don't quit, that's just what they want you to do

[Thagg]

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