Activision Blizzard sees second profitable union drive

High quality Assurance employees at Blizzard Albany, previously Vicarious Visions, voted to unionize their division on Friday, with 14 votes for and none in opposition to of the eligible 18 members of the unit (credit score to Polygon.) Game Employees Alliance Albany is the second QA unit at an Activision Blizzard-owned developer to unionize, following within the footsteps of Raven QA’s profitable push this previous Summer season.

The victory got here simply two days after the Nationwide Labor Relations Board dominated in opposition to Activision Blizzard’s movement to delay the vote. Activision Blizzard argued, because it had within the run as much as the Raven QA vote, that any query of unionization ought to apply to the entire studio versus a single division. 

GWA Albany argued, and the NLRB agreed, that there are sufficient variations in pay, therapy, and the character of their work that the QA employees had ample floor to unionize impartial of different departments.

GWA Albany will subsequent move to contract negotiations, a stage Raven QA stays mired in. Originally of November, Kotaku reported on the state of negotiations, significantly Activision Blizzard’s insistence on not awarding Raven QA employees a pay enhance granted to the corporate’s different QA models again in April. 

Activision Blizzard and Starbucks have each withheld normal pay raises from union workplaces, citing labor regulation drafted to make sure employers couldn’t sway union drives with modifications to pay. The Washington Put up reported in October that the NLRB discovered this to be retaliation for union exercise in Raven Software program’s case.

Future gamers could acknowledge the Vicarious Visions title⁠—underneath its former moniker, Blizzard Albany was a key help studio for Bungie that, amongst different contributions, spearheaded the PC port of Future 2. Blizzard Albany is at the moment engaged on the upcoming Diablo 4.