About 600 employees in Activision Publishing’s quality assurance department have formed a union. With assistance from the Communications Workers of America, employees completed the vote and the results were confirmed on Friday, March 8. At this point, Activision Quality Assurance United (CWA) has become the latest union established in Microsoft’s game department and the largest video game union in the United States.
during an interview edgeTom Shelley, a technology requirements expert and one of the organizers of the Activision Quality Assurance Alliance, said the labor neutrality agreement and Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard last year made their goal of unionizing more achievable.
“This is an emergency effort that has emerged over the past few weeks to address the opportunities we have to organize freely after the merger,” Shelley said. “As quality assurance people, we often have some of the weakest protections and some of the lowest wages in the industry – even though our work is critical to the success of the companies we work for and the work we produce.”
On the quality assurance side, staff test games to find bugs and other issues and flag them for fixes by other developers. Since most quality assurance jobs are typically entry-level, the industry has a reputation for downplaying these roles and emphasizing the need for labor protections.
Shelley commended Microsoft for voluntarily recognizing the union and hoped it would inspire more organizing inside and outside the company.
