Activision Blizzard CEO Says Company Will Recognize Raven Software Union And Begin Negotiations

gameinformer.com:

Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has announced in a press release that the company will recognize the union recently formed at Raven Software and begin negotiations. 

This news comes after months of controversy at Activision Blizzard surrounding its handling of Raven layoffs and the subsequent union efforts within the Call of Duty support studio. Here’s what Kotick wrote in the press release, in full: 

In December of last year, Activision Blizzard laid off several members of Raven’s quality assurance team. Shoftly after, dozens of Raven employees went on strike. Activision Blizzard did eventually break its silence on this strike, but it did not formally recognize it. Following that, 34 QA testers agreed to form a union. These testers asked Activision Blizzard to voluntarily recognize this union by January 25 but hours after the deadline, an Activision Blizzard spokesperson said it had declined to do so, citing that the two parties could not reach an agreement. You can read more about that here. 

Following this, Activision Blizzard announced that it was converting all U.S.-based QA testers to full-time employees, and giving them access to full benefits and hourly wage increases as a result. However, when asked if the former contractors laid off at Raven back in December would be hired back as a result of this conversion, an Activision Blizzard spokesperson told GamesIndustry.biz, “This conversion of nearly 1100 QA workers at Activision and Blizzard does not have any relation to the petition pending at Raven studio. The Raven situation is limited to Raven. The testers whose contracts weren’t extended were welcome then, and now, to apply for any jobs at the company.” 

When asked by Bloomberg if current Raven workers