US Labor Organization AFL-CIO Urges Game Developers To Unionize In Open Letter (gamasutra.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gamasutra: In the wake of Activision Blizzard's massive layoff wave, a move that was announced in the same call as the company's record quarter, the union federation AFL-CIO has published an open letter to game developers urging members of the industry to organize. The AFL-CIO itself is the largest labor organization in the United States and counts 55 individual unions (and more than 12.5 million workers) among its affiliates. The letter, readable in full on Kotaku, calls out many of the issues that have prompted conversations about unionization in just recent years like excessive crunch, toxic work conditions, inadequate pay, and job instability. The industry, points out AFL-CIO's secretary-treasurer Liz Shuler, boasted sales 3.6 times greater than those of the film industry in 2018, yet much of that financial success isn't felt by the developers working on the games that generate those billions. "Executives are always quick to brag about your work. It's the talk of every industry corner office and boardroom. They pay tribute to the games that capture our imaginations and seem to defy economic gravity. They talk up the latest innovations in virtual reality and celebrate record-smashing releases, as your creations reach unparalleled new heights," says Shuler.

"My question is this: what have you gotten in return? They get rich. They get notoriety. They get to be crowned visionaries and regarded as pioneers. What do you get? Outrageous hours and inadequate paychecks. Stressful, toxic work conditions that push you to your physical and mental limits. The fear that asking for better means risking your dream job. [...] Change will happen when you gain leverage by joining together in a strong union. And, it will happen when you use your collective voice to bargain for a fair share of the wealth you create every day. No matter where you work, bosses will only offer fair treatment when you stand together and demand it."

Comments

True

[vlad30]

But I find these days most Union leaders are more in it for themselves than the workers and they are looking for more union due paying members to support their lifestyle or political ambition

Re:True

[jeff4747]

or political ambition

Could you point to a recent election where a union leader won? Or even ran?

Or is this more along the lines of "political ambition" in the form of "lobbying", which is an excellent business practice when corporations do it, but horrifyingly evil when unions do it?

Re:True

[Daemonik]

Or is this more along the lines of "political ambition" in the form of "lobbying", which is an excellent business practice when corporations do it, but horrifyingly evil when unions do it?

Didn't you read the memo? Anything that can be done without paying buckets of money to a corporation is automatically heresy and to be publicly scorned.

Re:True

[vlad30]

Bill Shorten https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Likely to be Australia's Next Prime minister and most of his party are former Union Leaders and when they win the leader is either former union leader or union managemnt of some sort. While this may not be the case in the US we have a problem with unions in Australia https://www.theguardian.com/au... Note the US is one country on slashdot, the rest of the world is represented here also

Re:True

[Anonymous Coward]

If I even mention the "U" word in any workplace, I'd get sent out the door, and definitely blacklisted. Hell, I actually was told I was blacklisted for life from most places, just because I used to work at the county, and was a part of a local union there.

Of course, technically blacklists are illegal, but hey, when you use an offshore third party that gives a thumbs up or thumbs down on employees, you skirt that law.

Re:A Union Promoting Forming a Union...

[Daemonik]

Or, just go on believing you're the next John Galt just waiting for your genius utopia. That's what your CEO wants anyway while he's burning the company down around himself and cashing in before having your cubicle packed up.

The game industry isn't any different from the film industry, movies can literally be made anywhere in the world, that hasn't gotten rid of Union representation in the film business though, as much as the Oligarch class would prefer it otherwise.

Re:Note the language

[Daemonik]

Sounds like every corporation I've ever worked for. "Those" people are after your jobs! Work harder and don't take vacation or we'll buy robots! It's your fault we're moving to China, why can't YOU live on $5 an hour? We're a team aren't we??

That's actually a pretty good comparison

[Solandri]

The industry, points out AFL-CIO's secretary-treasurer Liz Shuler, boasted sales 3.6 times greater than those of the film industry in 2018, yet much of that financial success isn't felt by the developers working on the games that generate those billions.

So let's take a look at that. How has unionizing helped income equality in the film industry? Apparently not much, as two of the five companies with the worst CEO to median worker pay ratio are film studios, and a third is a TV studio.

If you look through that list, you get the sense that the presence of robust competition within the industry is the important factor, not unions. About a third of the companies on that list enjoy IP monopolies (copyrights, patents) or regulatory monopolies (ISPs). And several of the remainder have close to a natural monopoly.

Re:That's actually a pretty good comparison

[ceoyoyo]

My union just negotiated such indirect benefits as a salary cap and a six year pay freeze (to bring me under the salary cap).

AFL-CIO is Right but not the answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at German unions, intimately tied to the businesses their workers are employed. The business’ welfare is the union’s welfare. Less stupid shit happens.

Mega unions like AFL-CIO not so much. The big wigs in it aren’t working stiffs at the same places themselves but just political whores. They have so many businesses under their belt, they strike and the employees suffer because the business dies, they don’t care because they think they proved a point. It’s just trading one master for another.

The game industry needs to unionize but the workers don’t need a new master.

Bullshit

[rsilvergun]

Unionizing is the exactly opposite of divide and conquer. You might need to go look up what the word "Union" means.

You're strawmaning. You're trying to redirect the conversation away from "Game devs are being taken advantage of and should organized for better bargaining power" to "The heads of the Union you form might be corrupt so don't form one in the first place". The Stawman here is a big, scary Union Boss.

This has _nothing_ to do with negativity and everything to do with the fact that you, by yourself, do not have enough leverage to secure decent or even safe working conditions. This is a historic fact. It's not something that's up for debate. You by yourself cannot beat Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates in negotiations.

Of course you're just parroting a long standing anti-Union straw man. Are you getting paid to do this or just trolling for fun? Either way you're the 20th century equivalent of this. Didn't work last time either.

What about when the union does nothing to protect?

[Bruce Perens]

There are some cases in which union protection is important. Unfortunately, they don't always provide that protection, and one wonders why. One case where the union fell flat recently is the proposition in California that passed requiring changes in how EMTs handled emergencies during their breaks. This was promoted as making sure that emergency services were available to all, but they already were. The only change was that the big ambulance firm would no longer have to pay them overtime if they had to drop everything and take a call during their breaks.

The EMT's union, which I think was the same one that now wants to unionize game developers, declined to write anything in opposition to this proposition, and didn't mount any viable publicity campaign aginst the proposition. Thus, those EMTs who are out to save your life got screwed over.

You should stop mischaracterizing his words

[rsilvergun]

to fit your anti-Union narrative. Then you can believe that the AFL-CIO guy has the right idea. Does he have his own agenda? Hell yeah. So do I. I want to shift the country left so I can get single payer healthcare and my friends and family get guaranteed access to the stuff. Unions are part of that since it's hard to move left when the electorate is struggling to survive.

An agenda isn't a bad thing when your interests align. Assuming you're not planing to make a career as a right wing troll ala Roger Stone or Karl Rove then your interest are aligned with mine. Heck, even then most guys don't make it to Stone or Rove's level. They get ground up into paste by the machine.

Re:Note the language

[youngone]

I've never heard that from any company.

The multi-billion dollar corporation I work for is doing just this to the guys who make the products we sell right now.
Endless cost-cutting has resulted in poor quality, meaning customers leaving. Guess who is being told they have to take a pay cut?
If you've guessed the CEO I have a bridge to sell you.

Re:A Union Promoting Forming a Union...

[atouk]

>Didn't John Galt lead people out on strike?

WTF, Dude! You aren't supposed to actually read Ayn Rand, just cite it to give your opinion some intellectual weight.

Local Union President Here

[Anonymous Coward]

For years as union president. Total compensation = 0. Sorry if the facts contradict your opinions.

I wish I could tell you it would improve things

[nehumanuscrede]

Doing so, however, would be a lie.

Vlad30 nailed it in his post and had his Score not already been maxed out, I would have tossed some mod points his way.

I've worked within the confines of a Unionized company for more than twenty years now and, to be honest, they impress me less and less every year. Thankfully / hopefully, I will retire from this circus soon.

When contract negotiations begin, Union Leadership will fight tooth and nail for two things:

1) Maintaining or adding head count
2) Pay raises for their members

While the hard core Unionites will disagree with me, the Union fights for the above for one reason only: Getting one or both ultimately leads to more Union Dues being paid to the Union. ( #1 is obvious, #2 is because Union Dues are a percentage of a Union Members base pay. So a pay raise for the member = a pay raise for the Union )

That's it. That's all. That is the ONLY goal the Union has. Make. More. Money.

This is why our healthcare premiums keep increasing every year because the Union doesn't give a damn about how much their members have to pay out of pocket for health insurance. As long as they get their dues, everything is golden. No one seems to notice that their meager annual raise gets negated by the rising health care premiums.

Sometimes I wonder if the Union has a secret agreement with the company during negotiations to get that paltry raise and / or headcount in exchange for allowing the company to dump more of its healthcare costs on their employees. The Union doesn't lose anything in the process, so it's a Win-Win for them. Not so much for the employees though.

That said, the other problem with Unionizing is mediocrity.

The Rockstars will do their thing for a while, until they ask themselves why they're busting their ass while the Idiot ( who doesn't even know how to turn his computer on without help ) is making the exact same pay and benefits. Eventually, they give up, scale back their efforts and their light doesn't shine quite as brightly as it used to.

On the flip side, the Idiot realizes he doesn't really need to bust his ass like the Rockstar does since they are making the same pay and benefits. There isn't any motivation or incentive here to learn or increase their productivity because, in a Union, there can't be a pay / benefit difference for those performing the same work. This person does just enough so they don't get fired.

As a result, over time, the performance of any given group tends to trend downwards towards the Idiot side of things. They meet somewhere in the middle and you end up with a team who is mediocre at best.

The final insult is when the layoffs start. Once Unionized, your amazing Rockstar skills are irrelevant. The only thing that matters is Seniority. Whomever has been there the longest, will have the most Seniority. Layoffs start from the least Senior and work their way up to the top. So if you're a Rockstar who has been there for five years, but the Idiot has been there longer, guess who gets the axe first ? :|

Once upon a time, the Unions definitely had their place in the working world. These days, however, I think they've been corrupted by the money they bring in and the idea that they represent their members is merely a smokescreen for their true agenda.

That being: Make as much money as they can at the expense of those they're pretending to represent.

Re:I wish I could tell you it would improve things

[Uberbah]

That's it. That's all. That is the ONLY goal the Union has. Make. More. Money.

Which is a total sin in an organization where the CEO and the shareholders Want. To. Make. More. Money? You do know that union. operations. cost. money? Negotiating, recruiting and lobbying - same thing the company does with the profits you produce, but class traitors like yourself never have a problem with?

This is why our healthcare premiums keep increasing every year because the Union doesn't give a damn about how much their members have to pay out of pocket for health insurance. As long as they get their dues, everything is golden. No one seems to notice that their meager annual raise gets negated by the rising health care premiums.

You're so wrapped up in your anti-union Hatorade that you don't even notice that one of your main complaints is that the union doesn't have far more power to force more concessions out of the company.

That said, the other problem with Unionizing is mediocrity.

More bullshit. The "unions just protect the lazy" trope is dependent on the notion that you're happy to run over and do you job plus Steve's when Steve slacks off or doesn't know what he's doing. Human beings of course are not built that way.

The final insult is when the layoffs start. Once Unionized, your amazing Rockstar skills are irrelevant. The only thing that matters is Seniority. Whomever has been there the longest, will have the most Seniority. Layoffs start from the least Senior and work their way up to the top. So if you're a Rockstar who has been there for five years, but the Idiot has been there longer, guess who gets the axe first ? :|

The five year idiot who think's he's a rockstar but has just been sniffing his own farts the entire time.

"Robust competition" didn't win rights, residuals,

[Uberbah]

...or freedom from studio contracts that kept actors chained to MGM et all. Unions did that. Remember the writers strike from a few years ago? Where studios used loopholes to not pay writers for content streamed online, that the studios were profiting from? The word begins with a u...

Apparently not much, as two of the five companies with the worst CEO to median worker pay ratio are film studios, and a third is a TV studio.

So another union-bashing post were one of the primary complaints is...that unions don't have vastly more power than they do now. So what would you have them do? Seize the means of production, comrade? Would it be enough to take the board of directors hostage until the cave to demands, or would you recommend breaking out the guillotines?

But, back to residuals. All those episodes of old TV shows on streaming services or broadcast TV? Writers and actors get a check for that. Small checks but they get them. When someone buys a bundle of old games on Steam, EA may get a check, but the original programmers don't.

We've let Unions get gutted for 40 years

[rsilvergun]

If you don't maintain a thing it breaks down. What did you expect? Try skipping your cars oil changes for 40 years and let me know how that turns out for you. And do that while somebody is putting sugar in your tank.

We need to start passing pro-Union laws to protect American's collective bargaining rights again. Eliminating "right to work" (my God the right wing is good at marketing) laws is a good start. Also we need a ton of new laws banning companies from punishing workers for Unionizing. And anti Union busting laws too.

Are you fucking kidding me?

[rsilvergun]

the Screen actors guild has for decades insured actors get paid for work. Yeah, everybody points to Tom Cruise's big paydays and forgets all the smaller productions out there.

And don't forget all the blue collar folks who make movies happen. Sets don't build themselves. I know guys who did that work and they wouldn't trade their Union for anything.

As for Income inequity, their Union got them better pay. If the boss makes 100,000,000,000/yr and your making $100,000 yeah, income inequality is pretty bad there. But your Union (and you too, don't forget, the Union is Yout!) got you that $100k. They'd pay you $20k if they could get a way with it and without a Union to negotiate they would.

I think I finally see the problem though (if I may go a bit off topic). People have stopped thinking of themselves as "Union" and started thinking of a Union as a third party negotiator you just happen to hire. Folks forgot what it is to actually _belong_ to a Union. Now I wonder who put that idea into their heads

Re: You've never looked, then

[jeff4747]

Thanks, Catholic church.

No, that's Sunday off. You get Saturday off because of the efforts of Unions, and the need for non-union employers to match their benefits.