Microsoft QA workers to become full-time, unionized employees

polygon.com:

Microsoft is bringing on 77 formerly contracted quality assurance workers as full-time employees after negotiations with Communication Workers of America, according to Bloomberg. It’s not unheard of for a major company to make a move like this — Activision Blizzard did it in 2022 — but it is uncommon as the industry deals with a layoff crisis.

Microsoft has been in negotiations with ZeniMax Workers United, a group of 200 QA workers that unionized in January, since April. CWA said it was in those talks that Microsoft agreed to bring these 77 contracted workers into the QA union, moving them from employment under the staffing agency TCWGlobal to Microsoft itself. (These are not the 42 recently unionized Microsoft QA workers employed by Experis Game Solutions.) Several of these employees were to get laid off in the fall, according to the report. But because of the negotiations, 23 people “will get permanent full-time Microsoft jobs, with a 22% pay increase,” Bloomberg said, with the rest signing on as full-time, temporary Microsoft workers. (That includes a “$2.75-an-hour raises and paid sick days and holidays,” according to the report.)

Microsoft has not responded to Polygon’s request for comment.

“It’s made it possible to give a lot of great benefits to a lot of great people and this is a great opportunity for people who normally would feel like they don’t have a voice,” said ZeniMax worker and organizing committee member Aubrey Litchfield told Bloomberg. “The union informed Microsoft last summer that most of the contract staff had agreed to join it.”

It’s a huge step forward from Microsoft’s troubled history with contract workers: The company paid $97 million to temporary workers in 2000 after the workers filed a class