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Activision wants all Diablo staff at Blizzard Albany to vote on union

Activision wants all Diablo staff at Blizzard Albany to vote on union

US publishing giant Activision Blizzard has argued that all employees at Blizzard Albany working on the Diablo franchise should have a say on whether the studio unionises.

That's according to a report from The Washington Post, which says that lawyers for the Call of Duty maker and staff attempting to form a chapter of the Game Workers Alliance union spoke during a hearing with the National Labor Relations Board.

Labour lawyers argue that increasing the number of employees who can vote would dilute the voice of workers who want to unionise.

"We believe all employees should have the right to choose whether or not to join a union in a fair and confidential vote.

"Given our tightly integrated Albany operations, we believe strongly than no employee should be disenfranchised and that creativity, inspiration and the free exchange of ideas work best when all nonsupervisory employees in Albany working on Diablo get to participate in the vote, not just 20 quality assurance testers identified by the union."

Workers at Blizzard Albany revealed it was trying to unionise in July of this year. In August, staff said that Activision Blizzard was trying to bust attempts to form a union.


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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.