It has been announced that 600 Activision QA workers have formed the largest video game union yet, which has been assisted by the Communications Workers of America (CWA).
Taking to Twitter, @ABetterABK announced, “We are thrilled to announce that Activision Quality Assurance testers located in Minnesota, Los Angeles, and Texas have voted to form the largest union in the video game industry under the umbrella of Activision Quality Assurance United (AQAU).”
It continued, “This union was formed on five key principles that we wish to uphold within our workplaces: Democracy, Diversity, Equity, Solidarity, and Transparency. With our collective voices joined together, we aim to bring a brighter future to both our company and the industry at large.”
The union was voluntarily recognized by Microsoft and as a result, means that over 1000 QA workers are now unionized under Microsoft.
The final vote is tallied at 390 votes “yes” and eight votes “no,” a CWA representative told Polygon.
In a statement to Polygon, a CWA representative said, “Something we organized around is that in this industry, QA and customer service are the lowest paid jobs, and often looked down upon either within the industry or by customers,” Activision QA tester and organizing committee member Kara Fannon told Polygon. “It’s easy for people to say to QA, ‘Oh, I found a bug,’ even though we logged tens of thousands of bugs. So why is QA [unionizing], as opposed to other people in the industry? We have the weakest protections currently and we want to make sure that we’re strong so our work can keep going the way it is — we want to be supporting these games and working really hard on them.”
The Activision QA team works on some of the biggest video games in the industry, including the Call of Duty franchise, Crash Bandicoot, and more.
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