#unionization

"Members of the Teamsters union went on strike at Amazon early Thursday in a labor action at seven facilities in four states coast to coast just ahead of the holiday gift-giving rush.

Amazon said that its operations will not be affected by any of the union’s actions. Although the Teamsters claim to represent 7,000 Amazon workers nationwide, that accounts for less than 1% of the company’s US workforce."

"Amazon shows no indication it is willing to reach a deal with the Teamsters or even recognizes that the union speaks for any of its workers, despite the union declaring that employees at numerous Amazon facilities have signed cards asking to join."

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This is interesting news. The unionization of the Diablo team means that three of the four main game teams at Blizzard have unionized, leaving the Hearthstone and Battle.net teams the remaining non-unionized teams there. I suspect that they may follow suit soon. I wish them all the best of luck moving forward.

This is only the first step - the only game developer union I know of that has actually secured a contract with their employer so far is the RavenSoft QA union. Unions notably fight for better working conditions and compensation for their members, but don't have much leverage when it comes to big layoffs. The best they can do in those situations is usually to negotiate better severance packages if there are any to be had. I shouldn't have to tell you that layoffs are currently the biggest looming threat in the game industry today, and tend to be at the forefront of everybody's mind these days.

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