The National Labor Relations Board recently moved to proceed with Blizzard Albany’s union vote, denying Blizzard’s attempt to broaden the voting pool to include more workers, and now, Blizzard is appealing the decision once again, before the ballots have even been counted. The Diablo and Call of Duty maker filed a motion to impound the votes and halt their tabulation until sometime after the original Nov. 18, 2022, count date, GamesIndustry.biz reports, so the NLRB can hear Blizzard’s arguments one more time.
Polygon senior reporter Nicole Carpenter obtained some of the documents Activision Blizzard submitted to the NLRB, where the publisher argues that the NLRB’s current procedures are ill-suited to video game development.
“The process of creating a video game is… the opposite of the traditional processes in which the Board’s precedent have been developed,” Blizzard said in its appeal. “A video game studio does not produce a large volume of products by following a series of steps. Instead, a single video game is developed over an extended period of time… in which all of the employees at a studio work collaboratively.”
Its main argument is essentially that the video game industry is unique and that the NLRB's established precedents don't apply. pic.twitter.com/9NcIN4cZNl
— Nicole Carpenter (@sweetpotatoes) November 2, 2022
Blizzard also said that work on a live-service game such as Diablo is substantially different enough from work on multiplayer games like Call of Duty that Raven Studio, whose WA team successfully unionized earlier in 2022, should not serve as a precedent.
Blizzard used a similar argument about the difference of work in its original appeal, where the company tried persuading the NLRB that Blizzard Albany’s work on Diablo 4 necessitated including more than the QA team in a union vote. The Board discarded those arguments, but has yet to respond to the new appeal.
Sara Steffens, secretary-treasurer of the Communication Workers of America issued a statement to GamesIndustry.biz that Blizzard’s new appeal is another attempt to decrease the likelihood of the QA team forming a union.
“Instead of staying neutral, Activision’s management continues to present the same failing arguments in a desperate attempt to interfere with workers’ legal right to make their own decisions about forming a union and negotiating a collective bargaining agreement,” Steffens said. “It’s clear the company’s executives feel threatened by workers organizing in New York, Wisconsin, and across the country.”
Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF
