The Quality Assurance team at Blizzard Albany – a unit made up of about 20 employees – has filed for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board. The team asked Activision Blizzard last Thursday to voluntarily recognize their union. “I firmly believe that having the union is going to give us the power that we need to make our workplace better,” said Amanda Laven, associate test analyst at Blizzard Albany in an interview with The Washington Post. “It’s very exciting to go public with it and hopefully be able to inspire others the way that we’ve been inspired by Raven, and Starbucks and Amazon and all the unions that have come before us.”
Earlier this year, Raven Software QA workers became the first North American video game union at a major AAA company officially voting to unionize. Blizzard Albany, which was formerly Vicarious Visions before merging with Blizzard, said that they took cues from the organizing campaign at Raven Software.
“Raven has been a huge inspiration to us,” Laven said. “Seeing their process, it’s been demystifying to see them do it first and have an idea of how things go and how the company might respond. … We’ve already gotten to see some someone do it in our own company, and they’ve been very forthcoming with us talking to us about what things are like and what problems they encountered. It’s been very, very helpful and inspiring.”
The workers looking to unionize at Blizzard Albany call themselves Game Workers Alliance Albany. They say they chose the name Game Workers Alliance so other parts of the company and other games workers across the country could join. “The only way to get a raise above inflation is to take a job at a totally different company,” said a Blizzard Albany employee who is not a quality assurance tester, speaking on the condition of anonymity citing fear of retaliation. “If the executives at ABK want their workers to be productive, engaged and invested in the success of their workplace, they must recognize and bargain in good faith with unions. Workers deserve to be treated well and compensated fairly for the work they do, and for too long this has not been the case at Activision Blizzard.”
Activision Blizzard acknowledged the request but it is unclear right now if they would recognize the union.
“We deeply respect the rights of all employees under the law to make their own decisions about whether or not to join a union,” wrote Activision Blizzard spokesperson Rich George in a statement. “We believe that a direct relationship between the company and its employees is the most productive relationship. The company will be publicly and formally providing a response to the petition to the NLRB.”