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Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

theguardian.com

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Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#141

Post by LatteLazy »

nielsbot wrote: post #3

Wouldn't forming a union help them better negotiate as a group? FTA: "Activision Blizzard employees are also calling for an end to mandatory arbitration in employee contracts, which prevent workers from taking conflicts with their employer to court, policies to improve representation of women and marginalized groups, the publication of salary data, and an audit of the company by a diversity, equity and inclusion task…

I'm not sure unions can help with cultural issues: the frats can and should also join the union, then the union has to represent them. If the frat boy culture is rife in the company, it will be rife in the union.

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#142

Post by [deleted] »

elefanten wrote: post #7
nielsbot wrote: post #3

Wouldn't forming a union help them better negotiate as a group? FTA: "Activision Blizzard employees are also calling for an end to mandatory arbitration in employee contracts, which prevent workers from taking conflicts with their employer to court, policies to improve representation of women and marginalized groups, the publication of salary data, and an audit of the company by a diversity, equity and inclusion task…

It sure as hell would accelerate the outsourcing of game development, which has rapidly growing capacity outside of the US & Western Europe. We're already very near the tipping point where non-Western studios will produce >50% of global industry revenue.

[deleted]

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#143

Post by arbruijn »

ultimoo wrote: post #122
drdeadringer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did the walkouts at Google change anything? I was a "TVC" at Google several times. One of those times was during the walkout period. Even though I had no way of finding out about it until a lucky "right now in 3 minutes" time period, I participated. Whilst the walkouts may not have changed much on corporate or the outsourced "side-corporates" [the contract companies], it did change myself. For decades I've heard of…

What is TVC?

Temporary, Vendor or Contractor

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#144

Post by gatlin »

winphone1974 wrote: post #27
chadcmulligan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions do this, they negotiate agreements that are fair and equitable for the members. I grew up with unions and have seen them go out of favour, and the practices that caused the unions in the first place are rising again. The part I find surprising/despicable is how much money is put towards denigrating unions so that the workers think they're bad - the recent amazon vote comes to mind.

Well I grew up on the other side of unions where my parents couldn't get jobs because a strong union protected those lucky enough to get in early, with no concern for their skills or performance. The same behaviors that people here are so shocked by are busy as common in the old school unions you're proposing as the solution.

Your experience is not a reason to deny workers fair labor laws and rights, and smacks of astroturfing.

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#145

Post by stuaxo »

hulitu wrote: post #134
chadcmulligan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions do this, they negotiate agreements that are fair and equitable for the members. I grew up with unions and have seen them go out of favour, and the practices that caused the unions in the first place are rising again. The part I find surprising/despicable is how much money is put towards denigrating unions so that the workers think they're bad - the recent amazon vote comes to mind.

The problem with unions is that power corrupts and some of them become political organizations.

Maybe that is a US perspective?

A union is political in it's very nature (and of course it's an organisation).

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#146

Post by shapefrog »

runawaybottle wrote: post #46

I just saw the Kotaku article about Blizzard devs having their own ‘Cosby Suite’: https://kotaku.com/inside-blizzard-developers-infamous-bill-... You know, I’m not condoning or excusing anyone, but it might be time to stop drinking together as coworkers. You cannot come up with this kinda shit if your sober. Keep the beer out the office, keep the parties an hour long at most. We can’t handle it, it’s obvious.

So basically no friends at work? But still be there for 16 hours a day ...

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#147

Post by SecretDracula »

p1necone wrote: post #82
SecretDracula wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blizzard always made the worse, but more popular game of the time period. Total Annihilation was better than Starcraft. Baldur's Gate 2 was better than Diablo 2.

Total Annihilation is an entirely different type of RTS than Starcraft. Command and Conquer is probably a closer comparison. Likewise (and even moreso) Baldur's Gate 2 is a totally different subgenre of RPG than Diablo 2 (unless you're talking about Dark Alliance 2 on consoles). Baldur's gate is a hybrid turn based DnD rules adaptation with multiple player characters and more of a focus on characterization and storyt…

They may have been different in many ways, but they were directly compared to one another on the playground in the late 90s (at least on my playground). They were competing games.

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#148

Post by HowTheStoryEnds »

pjmlp wrote: post #139
garmaine wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions work where labor is interchangeable. That is definitely not the case in game industry, where people are highly specialized and super creative.

Apparently it works in Europe, go figure.

As a european(Belgian) I can only anecdotally tell you: no, it doesn't. They're the same instrument of collusion with the employer to keep wages down for the many in exchange for benefits of the upper few while also serving as the counterweight that keeps both the incompetent and the malicious firmly fixed in place. To put it in current days' terms: they're a major source of toxicity.

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#149

Post by matheusmoreira »

MattRix wrote: post #101
matheusmoreira wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why this is downvoted. Politics has been de-economized and the economy has been de-politicized. Not surprising given how dangerous this sort of organization is to the big corporations. Better to have people fight over gender politics than better working conditions and compensation.

People clearly care deeply about about both these things. It’s possible for the left to fight over gender politics AND working conditions.

Sure, and that's exactly what the rich corporations want. They'd rather see people fighting each other over gendered pronouns than threatening to burn the factory down due to rampant exploitation of workers.

Re: Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

#150

Post by hermannj314 »

nielsbot wrote: post #3

Wouldn't forming a union help them better negotiate as a group? FTA: "Activision Blizzard employees are also calling for an end to mandatory arbitration in employee contracts, which prevent workers from taking conflicts with their employer to court, policies to improve representation of women and marginalized groups, the publication of salary data, and an audit of the company by a diversity, equity and inclusion task…

I was part of one union and it did a good job of negotiating benefits, pay, hours, seniority, job titles, etc.

If the issue you have with management is harassment primarily, is it possible to create a union only to resolve that issue? Many may not want to give up individual bargaining on pay or hours simply because they wanted collective bargaining to deal with workplace harassment culture. How can an individual on the fence about supporting a union have guarantees to prevent that scope creep when forming a union? Or is it an all or nothing proposition? I.e. the union must negotiate everything on your behalf or it can not exist.

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