Working people across the United States regularly step up to help out our friends, neighbors and communities during these trying times. In our Service & Solidarity Spotlight series, we’ll showcase one of these stories every day. Here’s today’s story.
In yet another win for video game workers, staff in Activision Blizzard’s Platform and Technology department voted last week to form a union with the Communications Workers of America (CWA).
The newly recognized union members perform a number of essential roles for the game developer and are represented by CWA locals 9510 and 6215. Their roles include software engineers, project and product managers, and graphic designers for Battle.net, the platform that houses all of Blizzard’s online products and services. Workers within the new bargaining units also work on localization, quality assurance testing and customer support for the company’s other products.
“I’ve been at Blizzard for nearly 20 years, and I’ve seen so many incredible colleagues in the industry come and go for preventable reasons—either for better compensation or as a result of layoffs. Our culture is our people, and we can’t afford to lose that,” said organizing committee member and Principal Software Engineer Daniel Weltz in a press release. “We are forming a union to hold leadership accountable and to ensure that we can focus on building amazing experiences for the gaming community.”