Support Grows For Unionizing Video Game Industry, Survey Finds (hollywoodreporter.com) 47
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hollywood Reporter: Ahead of the Game Developer's Conference (GDC) -- which is dedicated to the art and science of making video games and set to take place March 16-20 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco -- the results of the organization's eighth annual State of Industry report were released Friday. Surveying nearly 4,000 video game developers with the intent of highlighting industry trends and forecasts for the future of gaming, this year's report indicates an increasing interest in the games industry to unionize. This was also a major topic of conversation in 2019, amid reports of gaming professionals working extended overtime hours and tolerating poor working conditions. Among the survey participants, 54 percent said that game industry workers should unionize (a 7 percent increase from last year), 21 percent answered "maybe" and 9 percent said they weren't sure. When the same group was asked whether they thought game industry workers would unionize, only 23 percent said "yes," while 43 percent said "maybe."
Re:Yo, BeauHD (Score:5, Insightful)
Unions absolutely do work. They guarantee high wage jobs for union workers, at the expense of fewer, and poorer jobs for everyone else.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Of course I already knew about closed shops -- my father worked in one. Thus the guys asking "Hey, can you get me into the union?" of my father, who was a steward. I never heard anyone complain about closed shops. When I heard complaints about the union they were from members who were mad that they got less out of a contract negotiation than their initial demands, or that the union couldn't prevent them from being fired for cause, things like that.
My wife's stepfather bitched about unions every now and then
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Right to work for less money. I fixed that for you, you left of the important part.
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It puts companies out of business when no one can afford to buy their overpriced goods.
I remember that, in the 1960s when we couldn't afford to buy anything. I was always glad to find the protein of a bug in my bowl of grass and leaves.
When my father the Teamster owned a nice home in the burbs with an in-ground pool in the back yard, a motor home, two boats, and four cars in the driveway, another boat and four dirt bikes in the garage, etc. those things that he had were made by other people working in, egad, union jobs.
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That's the same argument that business owners use to rail against the minimum wage increases we're seeing in a lot of the country. They yell about how they're job creators, and how paying someone a few bucks an hour more will put them out of business.
Business owners are insanely well off compared to the rest of us. They don't pay taxes at the same rates we do, their income is self-reported so it's easy to massage the books and reduce taxable income -- and they get tons of breaks for "expenses" that W-2 empl
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Except that by raising the wage floor, you push the supply-demand curve away from equilibrium, raising demand and lowering suppply, thus creating a shortage.
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That's just repeating the point that unions drive up wages with different words. The notion that this will lead to inflation or rising prices is debunked by the fact that countries with much higher minimum wages (and indexed to inflation) pay the same for consumer products as Americans do. That and opponents are arguing that millions of Americans should live in grinding poverty just so companies don't have to pay a living wage - to hell with that shit.
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Yeah! Why should only the union people have good jobs? Fewer and poorer jobs for everyone! /s
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Some people seem to think they are rockstars and unions will lower their pay. I've got news for them: the company sees them as a commodity. Especially in games where there are plenty of new suckers, full of passion, just waiting to be exploited.
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Some people seem to think they are rockstars and unions will lower their pay. I've got news for them: the company sees them as a commodity. Especially in games where there are plenty of new suckers, full of passion, just waiting to be exploited.
Whilst calling everyone snowflakes.
Original source material? (Score:2)
Notably, the article doesn't link to the actual survey. 'cause, ya know, who cares what the actual report says when you can pick a few talking points and glaze over the rest.
You have to give up your personal info to get the report, otherwise I'd go see for myself: http://reg.gdconf.com/gdc-stat... [gdconf.com]
This is useless (Score:2)
The studios will just move to right to fire states. In at will states unions are powerless.
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With all the droughts happening, they should really block the right to fire.
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What state requires employees to pay their employer if they quit without notice?
There are several jurisdictions that require either notice or severance pay in lieu of notice but none that I know of which would require an employee to pay anything just for quitting.
An employment contract may have such stipulations but that's orthogonal to any legal requirements surrounding employment termination which dictate only the minimum obligations
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The studios will just move to right to fire states.
Here in the United States, all are fire at will except Montana.
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The studios will just move to right to fire states. In at will states unions are powerless.
Unions weren't something that started in a situation with a whole lot of labour protecting laws. Granted, they didn't have it easy, but I believe that they gave power to the powerless is a fair description.
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You're confusing a couple of different employment law systems.
There's no such thing as "right to fire". You're probably thinking of "at will" employment; which is the law in most states. Basically "at will" means you can quit or be fired at any time, for cause or without, except for certain defined exceptions. Those usually involve discrimination against protected classes. But many also do forbid firing employees for union organization activities as one of those exceptions.
The other possibility would be
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As I have always called it, the "right to work," for less.
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The unions are only powerless when there is no solidarity. When there is solidarity and the company fires someone for BS then the rest of the workers stop working. This tends to keep companies in line, but solidarity is the key to labor's power.
AAA games make hundreds of million$ (Score:2)
The workers at Rockstar could quietly unionize and the only people who would notice the difference would be the accountants. And only because it's their job to look at where every penny goes.
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Perhaps the union crew had to adhere to certain safety codes to ensure the workers weren't being put in situations where they could be injured.
Remember haters: richest workers are in unions (Score:3, Insightful)
The very richest people in the United States who earned that money through their own work (as opposed to other people's work) are members of unions. Actors, athletes, directors, screenwriters. There is nothing about unions that prevents people from being paid based on the output of their work. So all this claptrap about how you as a professional who got his degree at Snowflake U doesn't need no stinking unions - you're cutting off your nose to spite your face.
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Unless you seen the true horror of what a union can do to a business and how lazy workers apart of a union can get when they see they figure out that union will make it almost impossible to be fired.
Perhaps the software union will be different, it stands to reason that it can be shaped. Perhaps instead of being fired immediately they can be trained and prepared for their next job instead of the way IT workers are treated now because they have a life.
I said CAN do some unions are good but when they get large that they can force a business in to bad contract's is when things can and WILL go sour real fast.
What about the good businesses competing with bad businesses who don't give a care about their people? Perhaps a union is a good way of leveling the playing field so that pay and conditions for IT workers starts going up, training is maintained and HR dep
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Dude you are so far out there you should take pictures of Alpha Centauri for NASA. The long term well being of any union is directly tied to the long term well being of the company it works for. As opposed to corporate executives who couldn't give the tiniest, greenest little shit if they drive the company into
strong support in Europe (Score:2, Troll)
There's tremendous support for the US video game industry to unionise in Bulgaria, Russia, Ukraine and Poland.
They're already making many of the games I play, and would welcome another boost to their competitiveness.
Go for it. (Score:2)
Seriously, if you think you can do it, go for it.
If you're right, and your work is irreplaceable and not easily passed off to the legions of young people or people in other countries who desperately want to do what you do, you will be successful and you will indeed (rightfully) get paid more, get better benefits and working conditions.
The flip side is that games will get more expensive (they're doing that anyway), and there will be a stifling effect on new games from big studios enmeshed in such agreements.
How about an IT/Dev professional org instead? (Score:2)
The problem with unions in the traditional sense is the audience. I'd be all for them -- I grew up in the Rust Belt and experienced what happened when steady work and a solid middle class lifestyle existed for normal workers, then were suddenly taken away. But, we've got major hurdles to overcome...
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Computers are part of our daily lives now; it's time to grow up as a profession.
Also so that we have representation at a political level so that our interests are looked after.
One more thing (Score:2)
One other issue that the video game industry specifically has...anyone organizing will just be fired and replaced with the 500 kids outside the gates begging to be let in. There seems to be an endless supply if people who just want to be abused for the chance to write video games. The exploits are well documented, yet people keep coming!
Remember (Score:2)
Happy employees don't feel the need to organize. Any organization who ends up with a union deserves it because they treated their works like shit.
Just what the world needs (Score:1)