Raven Software QA workers successfully vote to form union

Quality assurance testers at Activision Blizzard's Raven Software have voted in favor of forming a union.

The first union at Activision Blizzard? This has been months in the making.

• 28 QA workers, who work on Call of Duty: Warzone, had their votes counted on May 23, having mailed ballots to the National Labor Relations Board in April.
• 19 of the testers voted "yes," with only three votes being cast against the union. Now the group, known as Game Workers Alliance, will enter negotiations with Activision Blizzard.
• The union push, which is edging closer to becoming a reality, is being supported by the Communications Workers of America’s Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (CODE-CWA).
• Both parties now have until May 31 to file an objection to the union. If no objection is received then the result of the vote will become official and management must then bargain with the union moving forward.

A brief history: Some feel as if Activision Blizzard has been making moves to derail the union attempt.

• Some of the QA workers at Raven Software started their attempt to create a union at the company in January following a strike that started in December 2021.
• While the group has now had a successful vote, it's believed by some that Activision Blizzard has been attempting to stop the employees from organizing. This started in January when the games giant moved QA testers into "embedded" positions in other departments.
• In April, the company announced that it would offer 1,100 contracted and temporary QA workers the chance to become full-time employees. It didn't provide the new payment standards that the 1,100 full-time employees would receive to Raven staff, however, in another move that was seen by many as undermining and degrading towards the unionization effort.