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Activision Blizzard trying to discourage employees from joining union

Activision Blizzard trying to discourage employees from joining union

Staff at Activision Blizzard have been told that working conditions at the company can best be improved without a union.

That's according to The Washington Post, which reports that the firm's chief administrative officer Brian Bulatao emailed employees following a push by staff and the Communications Workers of America (CWA) to sign union authorisation cards. This could result in Activision Blizzard employees starting a union.

“We ask only that you take time to consider the consequences of your signature on the binding legal document presented to you by the CWA,” Bulatao wrote.

“Achieving our workplace culture aspirations will best occur through active, transparent dialogue between leaders and employees that we can act upon quickly. That is the better path than simply signing an electronic form offered to you by [the] CWA or awaiting the outcome of a legally mandated and regulated bargaining process sometime in the future.”

This comes in the wake of reports of myriad problems with Activision Blizzard's working culture. Most recently, staff walked out in protest of layoffs at Raven Software.

Last week, former Activision Blizzard employee Jessica Gonzalez set up a GoFundMe for a strike fund. At the time of writing, this has raised over $300,000. 


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.