Activision-Blizzard’s Proletariat drops request for union vote

by Danny Craig · 1/26/23, 3:56 PM
Activision-Blizzard’s Proletariat drops request for union vote
Blizzard Entertainment

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) has withdrawn its union vote request, claiming that the Proletariat’s CEO, Seth Sivak, “made a free and fair election impossible".

The details:

  • In December 2022, a group of Proletariat employees announced that they were forming a union and had already gathered enough support to win a vote.
  • Activision-Blizzard refused to recognize the union's request for a vote and instead requested the process be handled through the National Labor Relations Board in order to gather "all of the information and various points of view" from employees. On Twitter, the group issued a response statement, claiming that the leadership's actions were "right out of the union-busting playbook.”
  • The CWA has withdrawn its request for a union vote as a result of Sivak's "confrontational tactics," which included holding a series of meetings that "demoralized and disempowered the group". The CWA cited Microsoft's voluntary recognition of a union formed by 300 Zenimax QA employees as another path Proletariat could have taken that "empowers workers through a free and fair process, without intimidation or manipulation by the employer”.
  • Following the announcement, a spokesperson for the publisher responded to gamesindustry.biz, saying, "We appreciate that the CWA has unilaterally decided to withdraw its petition in response to employee feedback," while denying the CWA's claim that Sivak was demoralizing staff, stating, "that is totally false... he was defending his employees' right to express their true preferences in a private vote so that they couldn't be targeted for their perspectives—like he himself is being targeted by the CWA right now”.

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