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Raven Software, one of the development teams in charge of producing Call of Duty content under Activision Blizzard umbrella, has had a rough couple of months. After it became clear that the company's quality assurance staff is getting treated extremely poorly by management, word of unionization came about, and the company subsequently entered a feud with its publisher on what the future holds for it.
Despite Activision Blizzard's best efforts, Raven Software's QA team is now in the midst of casting an unionization vote held by the National Labor Relations Board, which the company has been in touch with. According to the latest information from Raven staff, however, the management is still actively attempting to sow doubt about these efforts through continuous anti-union messaging.
After it became clear that Raven Software QA employees are officially unionizing, Activision Blizzard seems to have doubled down on its anti-union correspondence. Anonymous Raven developers have told Washington Post that the company management has been sending out messages that suggest unionized employees would be skipped over when it comes to benefits and promotions, telling them to "please vote no," when casting their ballots.
Generally, the management at Raven Software seems to share this sentiment with its Activision Blizzard counterpart, where the VP of Activision recently posted anti-union messages on the company's official Slack channel. The unionizing QA staff described the management's attempt to muddy the waters as "disappointing and ineffective," and claim to have voted affirmatively on the NLRB ballot, which is due to wrap up on May 20th with a live video conference documenting the count.
It's worth remembering that NLRB was only contacted after Activision Blizzard refused to recognize Raven's QA unionization. Speaking with Washington Post, Raven staff said that the mere fact that Activision would work so hard to stop unionization attempts is proof that a union was necessary in the first place. In the meantime, Activision Blizzard claims that a direct relationship with individual team members would be the "best path to achieving individual and company goals."
Of course, Activision Blizzard does have a long history of promoting anti-union messaging. Late in 2021, an Activision executive sent a union-busting email to employees which seems to have correctly assessed the situation the company would find itself in just a few months later. Still, despite Activision Blizzard's attempts to prevent Raven Software from unionizing, everything seems to point to the vote being affirmative in the end.
Source: Washington Post