Last month Activision Blizzard was the target of a damning Wall Street Journal report detailing further alleged sexual harassment, assault, and inappropriate behaviour at the company, further shining an unflattering spotlight on a company already facing widespread condemnation following the launch of a California state lawsuit in July. The news reports that Kotick was aware of the allegations he reacted sexually to women employees, and that they were mistreated the whole company for the same period. In the paper, the magazine claimed that Kotick had been aware of the allegations “for years” of the sexual misconduct and mistreatment of workers in a lot of companies. The industry reaction was swift – Sony, Nintendo and PlayStation all made statement condemning Activision Blizzard – while 800 employees signed a petition asking Kotick to quit. However, the board of directors of Activision embraced Kotick’s leadership, commitment and potential. Earlier this week, frustrated Activision employees launched renewed strike action now on its fifth day of its operations, in part to require the company to reverse the recent firings of 12 software QA testers and make contractors full-time. The ABK Worker’s Alliance announced a fund of $1 million USD to help workers who want to leave and risk losing their pay. The fund received more than a dozen contributions at present. A colleague, as well as Activision’s employees, has launched a bid for unionisation. Over the past several staff members confirmed on social media they’ve received and signed union cards – part of the process through which workers must gain collective bargaining rights. In this moment, the head of Activision Blizzard’s Chief Administrative Officer Brian Bulatao wrote to company employees in a mail shared with the Washington Post journalist Shannon Liao. In that email, Balatao has revisited the previous discussions about how Activision should tackle its heavily criticised company culture, but he shares his message directly with recent reports of attempted unionisation among the employees. Balatao starts by telling the workers that “Activision Blizzard supports your right, under the National Labour Relations Act (NLRA), to decide whether or not to become a member of a union”, he then dedicates the following three paragraphs to the question of the omission as an illusion of the way that the unionisation looks more realistic. “As long as you decide for your future, we ask only you to take more time to examine the consequences of your signature on a binding legal document presented to you by the Communications Workers of America.” Once you sign the document, you will have signed the exclusive right to represent you in the collective bargaining process concerning all of the terms and conditions of employment. That means that your ability to negotiate all of your working conditions will be turned over to the CWA, as the documents say. “Achieving the aspirations of our workplace culture is the best way to achieve that – through active and transparent dialogue between leaders and employees that we can act quickly.” It’s better than to sign a form without a legal license, or in order to get into a negotiation process later in the year. If we fail to achieve the work-related goals we agreed to – we fail to do the things we’ve committed to doing – then you’ll still have the right to join CWA, Bulatao concludes. But we’re confident that we’ll make the progress we promised to make and create a workplace with you that we can all be proud of.
