Union Fights Microsoft Over Layoffs at Game Studios (aftermath.site) 24
Thursday the union that helped organize thousands of workers across numerous Microsoft-owned video game studios filed unfair labor complaints against Microsoft over the layoffs of 1,600 employees. The gaming news site Aftermath says the complaints allege unlawful action:
"Xbox management is required to bargain with the union over the decision of layoffs prior to implementing them during the status quo period, and we are pursuing every available avenue to protect our members," a Communications Workers of America spokesperson said in a statement to Aftermath... Speaking to Game Developer, CWA Canada president Carmel Smyth elaborated on the unions' misgivings... "Basically the employer cannot arbitrarily change working conditions while it is engaged in negotiating with the union. We will continue to file legal challenges if necessary, and do all we can to defend the rights of Bethesda Game Studios workers...."
"I'm very proud of the hard work the bargaining committees and CWA staff have put in to evaluate the legality of how the layoffs were conducted," a current id Software employee and union member told Aftermath. "It's important, even for the world's largest and most profitable companies, that there are consequences for violating federal labor law. If we hadn't explored this avenue to hold Microsoft accountable, it would be a sign to all other game executives that they can break the law and get away with it."
Legal action is just one part of unions' larger effort to hold Microsoft accountable for its decision to lay off thousands of workers. This week, CWA also hosted a series of "Save Our Devs" demonstrations outside the offices of affected studios like Zenimax, id Software, Bethesda, and Obsidian.
"I'm very proud of the hard work the bargaining committees and CWA staff have put in to evaluate the legality of how the layoffs were conducted," a current id Software employee and union member told Aftermath. "It's important, even for the world's largest and most profitable companies, that there are consequences for violating federal labor law. If we hadn't explored this avenue to hold Microsoft accountable, it would be a sign to all other game executives that they can break the law and get away with it."
Legal action is just one part of unions' larger effort to hold Microsoft accountable for its decision to lay off thousands of workers. This week, CWA also hosted a series of "Save Our Devs" demonstrations outside the offices of affected studios like Zenimax, id Software, Bethesda, and Obsidian.
If you work in tech (Score:5, Insightful)
and you still don't see the value of unions, I don't know what to say.
Companies are simply churning through their work force to suppress wages. Over hire, over fire. It's a toxic culture of pure stress for everyone below the VP level.
Re:If you work in tech (Score:4, Insightful)
and you still don't see the value of unions, I don't know what to say.
Companies are simply churning through their work force to suppress wages. Over hire, over fire. It's a toxic culture of pure stress for everyone below the VP level.
...there's also the H1-B situation.
1926 unions or 2026 union? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you work in tech and you still don't see the value of unions, I don't know what to say.
1926 unions or 2026 union? Because the two are nothing alike in many cases. There’s a bit a “stolen valor” going on here. Today’s unions like to sell themselves on image of the unions of the distant past, but actually operate quite differently. Actually many are more about serving union leadership not workers, more about political power for self enrichment. At least that is what old time union members had told me, men who witnessed the change over the decades. Also, a friend worked a
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Anyway, workers need a collective voice to provide some balance between their power and their employer's. To think otherwise is to be pro-business and therefore anti-worker and anti-consumer.
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Anyway, workers need a collective voice to provide some balance between their power and their employer's. To think otherwise is to be pro-business and therefore anti-worker and anti-consumer.
Similar to unions not being a panacea, plenty of bad ones. Employers are not necessarily a nightmare, plenty of good ones.
Find a company still run by its original founders, founder who treated their people well when they were small tend to continue to do so when they are big. They chose to listen to groups of employees, they chose to listen to employees individually. Things not going to hell until the founders leave. I’ve had good fortune to work in several such situations over the decades and was
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Indeed, simply the threat of employers unionizing makes employers behave better!
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Indeed, simply the threat of employers unionizing makes employers behave better!
Wrong. These founders were one of us. Fellow engineers who started their own companies. They got their hands dirty with the real work as often as possible. They genuinely took care of us. These are the sort of places where people routinely stay 10 years or more. Sad if you never had the chance to experience such a place.
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Businesses are pro-consumer by definition, unless they are government subsidized. Being anti-union (as I am) is being as pro-consumer as possible. Unions push prices up, consumers want lower prices, unions are anti-consumer.
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Businesses use consumers to make money. That's not the same as being pro-consumer.
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in the free market businesses form and compete for consumer money with other businesses, it is the competition that is pro consumer. Unions, like any other political formation, exists to protect special interests, preventing businesses from competing to the best of their ability and pushing prices up - anti consumer.
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In an unregulated market--which is what businesses want--they eventually engage in collusion and form monopolies and stop competing. Therefore, being pro-business is being anti-competition and therefore anti-consumer.
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in an unregulated market (what consumers need), new businesses are able to create new competition if there is money to be saved for consumers.
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and you still don't see the value of unions, I don't know what to say.
I think a lot of people just fetishize information technology to a degree that they lose all perspective and all sanity.
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Funny how everything will get settled in a midnight-behind-closed-doors meeting between a couple MS guys and the head of the union, with none of the $100 a month dues-paying workers even informed.
Don't worry, the union steward will fight for you, when they can get a break from their work coding an update to the AI that keeps handing them more tasks to update the AI... and, you can only discuss Union stuff on your break (which will always happen five minutes from now).
Unionization (Score:4, Interesting)
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Its worth noting why some of us are against unions. This is an international forum after all, not all of us live in a country where worker protection laws are just the text "Hahahaha fuck you."
I am against unions. I don't need them. Where I live they add little but cause tremendous waste. America does, absolutely, need unions for worker protections.
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Agreed. (Again? What is happening?)
If you have reasonable worker protections in place, unions are redundant and mostly cause problems. In Europe, worker protection is typically at least reasonable. In the US, it very much is not.
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Right, and the end result will be the union itself getting paid more than the workers it represents. Members of the union will either get nothing or just a few bucks, paid by the union itself from its collection reserve (if it even has one). Not many unions force a company to pay you even when work isn't available, where a down-size is required.
Woah the CEO from copilot is now messing up Xbox? (Score:2)
Right in the zone of uncertainty for me. (Score:2)
I have a mixed view of unions. I think they're best used to protect the individual, but if abused this is a mixed bag as well. Workers are a diverse, clunky mess of individuals good and bad, and so are the protective mechanisms.
However, I think that companies should be able to shutter departments, entities, and roles pretty much at will provided they compensate those affected within reason. Obviously this gets complicated if a company seems like they're closing a section specifically because they are unioni
Game studios were screwed when they old to MS (Score:2)
Fuck em (Score:2)
"Fuck you" - entitled Union socialists.
Gee, I wonder why everyone hates them.