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Merit to charge Kickstarter illegally fired union organiser, US labour agency says

Merit to charge Kickstarter illegally fired union organiser, US labour agency says

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has ruled there's merit to the notion of Kickstarter unlawfully firing a union organiser.

That's according to Motherboard, which says the federal agency says the crowdfunding platform might have fired Taylor Moore for attempting to create a union at the company. Moore was one of two employees whose jobs were cut in September 2019. Kickstarter CEO Aziz Hasan said at the time that this had nothing to do with the creation of a union, but both staff fired were involved in its organisation.

The 1934 National Labor Relations Act says that it is illegal to discriminate against staff for being involved in unions.

Kickstarter became one of the first major tech organisations in the United States to form a union in February of this year.

"This should be a signal to workers that you can win, even as weakened and corrupted as the NLRB is by Trump's influence. You can still win. This is still a fight worth having," Moore said.

"Having witnessed it all firsthand, the evidence can't be clearer. I was coming off my best three quarters when I was fired and they never gave me or any one else a sufficient reason for termination."

Kate Bernyk, the director of communications at Kickstarter, added: "The NLRB has not issued a complaint and there have been no formal findings of any violations of the National Labor Relations Act. If the NLRB does issue a complaint and Mr. Moore's claims are heard by an administrative law judge, we're confident that the NLRB will find our decision to part ways with this employee was for legitimate reasons.

"We hope to be able to resolve this matter soon, and we continue to remain focused on working with our staff’s union to negotiate a fair and productive collective bargaining agreement,"


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.