Industrywide Video Game Union Announced, Open To Anyone In The Business
One of the largest labor unions in North America is creating a new United Videogame Workers union, which aims to allow anyone in the business to join. Communications Workers of America has teamed up with the American Federation of Musicians to launch this new gaming-specific organization to coincide with the start of the Game Developers Conference.
According to the group’s FAQ, this new gaming union will offer basically anyone in the industry–in the United States and Canada–the opportunity to sign up and then eventually pay dues. This is also open to the thousands of people who have lost their jobs over the past couple of years. The United Videogame Workers mission statement mentions taking “back our lives, our labor, and our passion from those who treat us like replaceable cogs; to empower our fellow workers; to link up arms with the laid off, with the freelancer, with the disillusioned contractor, with the disenfranchised and the marginalized, with the workers laboring invisibly to keep this industry afloat.” The new organization also advocates for creating studio-specific unions, too, like ZeniMax Workers United.
“The creation of this union was not done in isolation; it’s a cumulative effort by the thousands of video game workers who have been fighting for years to redefine what it means to stand together and reclaim power in one of the largest and highest-grossing industries on the globe,” said CWA’s senior director of organizing Tom Smith in a press release.
This isn’t the first time the CWA has made waves in the gaming industry. For example, Bethesda Game Studios became unionized last year with the help of the organization. Additionally, the CWA went after Microsoft for allegedly firing QA testers because they were attempting to unionize. Last but not least, in October, the labor union criticized Sony’s decision to shut down Concord developer Firewalk.
Last year, video game voice actors went on strike, and it’s now going on its eighth month. Recently, SAG-AFTRA argued there are too many AI loopholes for game publishers to use.
GDC kicks off today in San Francisco.
NoxPlayer is a free Android emulator for playing mobile games on PC and Mac, supporting Android 5, 7, 8, and 9, and compatible with Intel, AMD, and Apple processors. You can run NoxPlayer perfectly on commonly-used operating systems like Windows 7, 8, 10, 11, and iOS.
Visit our site to learn more about NoxPlayer : www.bignox.com