A Group of Sega Employees Across Multiple Departments Has Chosen to Unionize

mmorpg.com:

A group of employees at Sega of America have announced their intention to unionize, according to a new report. The group, consisting of 144 employees at Sega’s Irvine, CA, has filed for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

The news was reported by The Verge, which interviewed some of the workers ahead of their big announcement. This marks the latest group of game studio employees, in this case a supermajority at the studio, to intend to organize. As with other unions that have organized within gaming, they are working with Communications Workers of America(CWA), and are known as Allied Employees Guild Improving Sega (AEGIS).

AEGIS employees work in different departments, standing out from many prior efforts, which were led by QA workers. In fact, this is the largest game industry union made up of different departments. According to their mission statement, “Our workers and our audience deserve games made by people who make a living wage. In our quest to reclaim our collective power, we have built bridges with fellow workers from across our company in an effort to understand our shared issues, and those that are unique to each department”.

Efforts to unionize at Sega Irvine began more than a year ago, and according to the employees interviewed by The Verge, they did not receive anti-union sentiment during their organizing efforts and are hopeful that management might recognize their efforts.

“We are doing this because we respect our coworkers and we want to be able to make a sustainable workplace,”said Torie Winkler, a community manager with Sega.

This newest effort follows successful unionization efforts at multiple studios, including Activision Blizzard owned Raven Software and Blizzard