The multi-billion dollar buyout of Activision-Blizzard by Microsoft is going to undoubtedly make waves across the games industry, game platforms, and game developers. It’s that last one that the Communication Workers of America union is obviously concerned with, which has prompted union president Chris Shelton to urge the European Commission to clear the deal, citing the opportunity for devs at ActiBlizz studios to have “a clear path to collective bargaining if the merger is completed.”
The letter addressed to Commission executive vice president Margrethe Vestager references the labor neutrality agreement the CWA entered into with Microsoft last June, which promised employees “a seat at the table” of ActiBlizz studios and let the workers of those studios democratically choose to organize.
“Collective bargaining is an effective counterbalance to employer power over the labor market, as is well documented in empirical research,” Shelton writes. “Given the clear pathway to enforceable behavioral remedies for potential consumer harms articulated by the European Commission and other regulators, we hope you will approve this merger and help make history in rebalancing power in labor markets.”
This is at least the second such time that Shelton has used the CWA’s weight to back the deal, as he wrote similar sentiments in a published editorial aimed at the US Federal Trade Commission, where he also referenced the same neutrality agreement.
Despite the CWA’s full-throated focus on letting the merger go through, we hasten to point out that Microsoft is still a massive company that does massive company things, like shed 10,000 workers including employees at some of its bigger game development studios.
CWA President Chris Shelton sent a letter to @Vestager, Executive Vice President of the European Commission, urging her to seriously consider the positive impact the Microsoft-Activision merger could have on the video game labor market. https://t.co/hU0MwA5kgA pic.twitter.com/OOslQkXMsM
— CWA (@CWAUnion) February 20, 2023
