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EA Spouse Posts Plans for Watchdog Organ
Jaero writes "The Spouse has a followup post to her "EA: The Human Story" from over a month ago. Not only was it nominated for a Best Software Essay of 2004, but she has revealed plans to start an independent industry watchdog organization called GameWatch.org, meant to monitor the quality of life in the game development world. Anyone will be able to post their story, as well as design the logo (a contest which lasts until January 15th)."
As discussed elsewhere EA sports has an exclusive deal with the NFL and the NFLPA. I expect them to allow more reasonable hours for their developers, because they will be able to turn out an inferior product without competition. Gamewatch, when it comes to pass, is a charming idea, but unions are coming to the IT field. Regretably mean unscrupulous businessmen are taking advantage of nice developers with scruples. And most developers have listened to RMS at some point in time and have some of that altruism in them. Which means they need an organization to defend them. Union is the right thing to do. Can you imagine an organized strike of IT workers?
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
Headline writers should be careful about creating needless and misleading abbreviations. Especially a headline that uses both "spouse" and "organ".
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
It certainly would be organized, but geeks on strike? I think not, stikes are outside and picket signs are heavy.
This whole EA thing is really indicative of a larger problem... unions in North America.
I grew up in Canada, with a father in management at a public utility. I heard endless complaints about the union workers at said utility... how they were overpaid and underworked, but there wasn't anything management could do about it, or there would be a strike.
Then I went to work in Europe, and lo and behold, almost everyone is in a union. Furthermore, the union workers are not abusing their powers. Instead, the unions help their members get jobs and training, with contract negotiation basically a secondary function. It simply isn't needed, because companies tend to be fair in the first place. The unions publish wage statistics that companies are expected to follow, and they do.
It seems that in North America, unionized workers are the ones that need it the least, while companies like Wal*Mart and EA do whatever they want to their employees. There's this attitude of management to care only about the bottom line and not about the workers, while at the same time, unions are all about grabbing more and more for their members (see the current labour situation in the NHL).
I hope that at some point the system can change, but it's a long way off.
And for what it is worth, Yes. I am a game programmer, so I have at the least, an informed opinion.
I am fortunate enough to work at a company that is exactly what EA is not. So I dont feel particularly persecuted or exploited at the moment. Hell, I can post to slashdot while at work, it appears.
There is something about Unions that are repulsive on some level to myself and the programmers I know. Mostly due to the negative connotations they have aquired.
First, myself and my coworkers basically agree one one element though. A crunch is acceptible when needed. A death march is not. The goal then, is to prevent a death march.
Second, the amount of hours that are needed for a project is directly dependant on how much time a project is given and how much money is offered for it. Both those variables are controlled by the publisher. The dev studios must work with what they can get in that regard.
A death march happens when either the time frame for a project cannot be met using sane hours from the available programmers. The way to avoid a death march is to ensure that there are enough programmers on a project to complete in in the allotted time frame.
Having a union for game programers at one developer studio means that a publisher will simply not give that studio any projects. To my thinking, there is just too much of a disconnect between the part of the industry that gets the lions share of the money and the part of the industry that creates the products.
EA did not turn into a shit hole to work at until after they started to focus hard on the bottom line. Being a publisher AND develper, they should know better. But I bet that the guys in Decision Making positions do nothing more then dictate how a game will be made. They do not have to actually work under the conditions they mandate.
My previous job, when we were in a crunch, I do not recall the decision makers actually being at the office. The lead programmers were the highest meatbags on the food chain, and they were just as slammed as anyone. But at my current job, I can honestly say that my boss puts in harder hours then anyone else, for the most part. The resulting difference in crunch policy is obvious to one who has seen both methods.
The I think that the real solution is to make sure that the people who dictate schedules are also working under those schedules. But I dont know how to make that happen. All a union does is add another layer of people who do not work under the conditions they create (though I concede that the union types are closer to those conditions then management types).
END COMMUNICATION
OK, forget the game industry for a minute and look at all industries. All industries seem to be purely focused on the bottom line. Not that most of them take it to the extent that EA seems to have.
Virtually everywhere we see people making less, their jobs getting outsourced, or employees be laid off. However, the income gap between the bottoms rungs of an organization and the top level has been skyrocketing across all industries. It's time for all workers to have a little more respect for themselves.
I'm not talking about people have jobs where they don't do anything all day and never have to work late, but companies should stop taking more from their employees every year than they give them. More and more it seems the trend were employees get a raise less than the inflation rate and they are expected to essentially take a pay cut and then pay more for health care and get less benefits. IMO there doesn't seem to be an end for this trend but I guess we can all hope.
For EA Redwood City, IATSE Local 16 has jurisdiction. Here's the union contract for Industrial Light and Magic, whose CGI employees are represented by IATSE Local 16, San Francisco.
Some key clauses:
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The basic five day workweek for this computer graphics unit is 45 hours (40 hours of straight time and 5 hours of (1.5 times rate) overtime. This workweek is a flexible one, allowing the employee to work as many as 12 hours in a day without additional pay as long as the aggregate hours worked in the five day period does not exceed 45. Hours worked in excess of 12 in one day or 45 in the five day workweek will be compensated at 1.5 times the hourly rate. All overtime beyond 9 hours in any day or 45 hours in any week must be expressly pre-approved by the employee's supervisor. Any employee who works more than five (5) days out of any seven (7) consecutive days shall be compensated (i) for time worked on the sixth day at a rate not less than one and one-half times the hourly rate for the classification of the employee and (ii) for time worked on the seventh day at a rate not less than two times the hourly rate for the classification of tfie employee.
With a contract like that, "crunches" mean huge overtime pay. They still happen, but the paychecks go way up when they do. So employers don't understaff.IATSE also represents Dreamworks SKG employees, who work in the same building complex as EA Redwood City, doing very similar jobs.
An IATSE organizer can be found at most Bay Area SIGGRAPH meetings. The links above will take you to the union web sites.