The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled in favor of Blizzard Albany’s quality assurance team in, The Washington Post reported, giving the QA unit a clear path to proceed with its vote to unionize. The Albany campus, which was formerly Vicarious Visions before Activision Blizzard folded that entity into the wider company, originally announced its intent to unionize in July 2022 following Call of Duty maker Raven Studio’s successful attempt earlier in the year.
“I’m very happy and excited that we can move forward with voting for our union,” Amanda Laven, associate test analyst at Blizzard Albany, told the Post. “I hope that Activision Blizzard will set an example for companies everywhere by not engaging in further union-busting and by working with us in good faith.”
During the August hearings, one of Blizzard’s arguments involved the concern that testers working on different games shouldn’t be allowed to form a single organization. The company presented Diablo IV and the different work involved in it as supporting evidence, including sensitive information such as names and social media accounts of QA employees, prompting concerns over the possibility of targeted online harassment.
The NLRB’s regional director dismissed Blizzard’s arguments as irrelevant and said the difference in projects amount to differences in assignment only, with no effect on the collective interests of workers, whose annual salaries are approximately $15,000 less than other Blizzard employees.
The NLRB will begin mailing ballots to the QA unit members on Oct. 27, 2022, and the vote count will take place in a video conference on Nov. 18, 2022.
Activision Blizzard responded to the NLRB’s decision in a statement the Post obtained, reiterating the company’s belief that all employees should have the right to vote instead of just one unit. Labor experts previously told The Washington Post that anti-union companies often use similar tactics to dilute the voting pool and decrease the chance of a vote favorable to unionization efforts across the company.
Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF
