The Communications Workers of America union (CWA) has filed unfair labour practice charges against Activision Blizzard on behalf of the ABK Workers Alliance.
The CWA has previously represented employees at Activision Blizzard King, and most notably house the recently formed union at subsidiary Raven Software.
The new charge comes a week after employees at Blizzard Albany (formerly Vicarious Visions) won the right to form a union.
In our earlier article regarding Vicarious Visions, a statement from Activision Blizzard’s chief communications officer Lulu Cheng Meservey was shared. The statement, posted to a read-only channel in the company’s internal Slack, called for “direct dialogue between company and employees” whilst dissuading employees from forming a union. The full statement was shared to Twitter by ABK Workers Alliance co-founder Jessica Gonzalez.
The anti-union sentiment of Meservey’s statement angered employees, with the ABK Workers Alliance stating its frustrations at the hypocrisy of being unable to respond directly to Meservey. Meservey herself remained defensive on Twitter when her internal statement was shared publicly.
The Code-CWA, a subdivision of CWA, announced yesterday it had filed unfair labour practice charges against Activision Blizzard in response to Meservey’s statement, which argued for “a streamlined process” over collective bargaining.
“Last week, Meservey sent a company-wide Slack message disparaging the union, making threats to withhold raises and benefit improvements from workers who joined the union, and giving workers an impression that their union affiliation and/or support was under surveillance,” the CWA said in its statement.
Activision Blizzard has several ongoing lawsuits, including sexual harassment complaints filed individually and by larger bodies such as the State of California, and has already been widely criticised by employees for its attitude and actions regarding unions.
