Activision Blizzard reorganizes Raven tester department that voted for union
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Activision Blizzard game-testing workers in Wisconsin are expected to file for a union with the National Labor Relations Board. In the meantime, the company reorganized the testers in an alleged effort to split them up, the Washington Post reported.
The action will come after the company failed to reach an agreement with the 34 quality-assurance workers at Raven Software who have said they are forming a union. The workers had asked for Activision Blizzard, which has about 9,500 workers and publishes Call of Duty, to recognize their union, which is a rarity in the video game industry. The workers at the Madison, Wisconsin-based Raven Software division of Activision Blizzard said they have a majority of votes within their department. The workers are testers on the Call of Duty: Warzone game, and their union effort was triggered by layoffs, excessive overtime, and low pay. Activision recently announced it was pushing back the launch of Season 2 of Call of Duty: Vanguard and its accompanying Warzone update as it worked to quash bugs.
Meanwhile, Raven’s studio boss Brian Raffel sent a letter to employees saying that the company had made an organizational change that was part of its ongoing changes at the studio. It said it would take the game testers and spread them out among the departments they worked for and embed them in departments such as animation, art, design, audio, production and engineering.
The workers saw this as an effort to dilute their unionization efforts across a larger number of departments and
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