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Game Industry Workers Get Voice
Shodan writes "eToychest writes that a new game union of sorts has been formed to both recruit new industry talent, as well as give them a unified voice when it comes to maintaining a work/life balance. PEER (Professional Electronic Entertainment Recruiters) was created to establish and maintain ethical work standards and optimum recruiting service for game industry developers, publishers, and related industry companies." From the article: "The part that catches my eye is 'ethical work standards', which I cannot help but think was established, at least in part, due to all of the fervor surrounding EA and the treatment of its employees. The group seems to be a sort of 'worker's union', as they say that in an era where quality of life and rapid growth are chief concerns, PEER gives its members 'a representative voice.'" It will be interesting to see where this leads.
What it really is, if you read their "charter", is a price-fixing scheme for headhunters. They "agree" that they should get 20% of the first year's salary, payable at hiring time.
There's a real union for game developers - the Animation Guild, local 839, IATSE, AFL-CIO. They represent most of the animation people in Hollywood, and they're organizing game developers who are artists.
Unions are a firm UK tradition ...just like the riots that they often cause. So there are already lots of powerful unions which UK programmers can join.
The BECTU http://www.bectu.org.uk/ are a good one with 25,000 members, mainly media company employees though (which apparently includes Game Development). If they identify more as software engineers than game developers then there are a host of engineering unions who would accept them. Amicus http://www.amicustheunion.org/ are amongst the biggest and already have many thousands (I think) of IT employees as members.
The TUC website http://www.tuc.org.uk/ is probably the best online resource though.