The Call of Duty: Warzone QA team is unionising at Activision Blizzard

The quality assurance team at Call of Duty: Warzone developer Raven Software has announced that they are unionising with the Communication Workers of America (CWA). Uniting under the banner Game Workers Alliance, they have called upon Activision Blizzard leadership to voluntarily accept that the union has formed and accept collective bargaining.

This isn’t quite the first video game developer union formed within the US, but it is the first to form at Activision Blizzard. With a supermajority of 78% of the QA team agreeing to unionise, they have given Activision Blizzard five calendar days to voluntarily accept their union before doing so without management recognition by filing for a union election at the Nation Labor Relations Board, which will force Activision Blizzard to bargain with the collective. This has stemmed from the ABK Workers Alliance that formed in the wake of the lawsuits and allegations in the summer of 2021 started to hand out union cards for employees to sign. Game Workers Alliance is starting small and focussed on a single department, but could lay the foundations for something much bigger.

Quality Assurance is an essential part of any software development process. However, Quality Assurance Testers are consistently undervalued, undercompensated, and overworked. (1/2)

— Game Workers Alliance #WeAreGWA (@WeAreGWA) January 21, 2022

The catalyst for the ongoing strikes and unionisation was the termination of a number of contractors within the QA team at Raven Software. 12 QA staff were told one-by-one that they would no longer have a job come the end of January 2022, despite being in good standing as employees and previous assurances of continued work that had, in some cases, seen them relocate to different parts of the country. Activision Blizzard has not met (and not even really acknowledged) their demand to reinstate these employees, and Warzone players are already noticing a significant rise in the number of bugs and glitches present in the free-to-play game.

Raven Software QA tester Becka Aigner said in a news release: “Today, I am proud to join with a supermajority of my fellow workers to build our union, Game Workers Alliance (CWA). In the video game industry, specifically Raven QA, people are passionate about their jobs and the content they are creating. We want to make sure that the passion from these workers is accurately reflected in our workplace and the content we make. Our union is how our collective voices can be heard by leadership.”

The CWA has called upon Activision Blizzard to accept this union, with secretary-treasurer Sara Steffens saying, “We ask that Activision Blizzard management respect Raven QA workers by voluntarily recognizing CWA’s representation without hesitation. A collective bargaining agreement will give Raven QA employees a voice at work, improving the games they produce and making the company stronger. Voluntary recognition is the rational way forward.”

Activision are going to be dragged kicking and screaming into agreeing to recognise any kind of union. Last year they issued a statement that gave thinly veiled threats against unionisation, claiming it would stop attempts to address problems with workplace culture. Then again, management might have a different opinion on matters, what with the agreed plan to make all of Activision Blizzard’s workers into Microsoft’s $68.7 billion problem.

Source: Polygon

Source: https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2022/01/21/the-call-of-duty-warzone-qa-team-is-unionising-at-activision-blizzard/