Raven Software: National Labor Relations Board Rules QA Workers Can Vote Whether To Unionize This Month

gameinformer.com:

Raven Software quality assurance workers at Activision Blizzard will get the chance to vote whether or not to unionize starting this month, after a ruling from the National Labor Relations Board. 

This news comes by way of Polygon, which reports that the NLRB ruled Friday that the 21-person QA unit in question is eligible to unionize after Raven’s parent company, Activision Blizzard, challenged the effort, attempting to make it so that the entire 230-person team must vote on the decision. Now, the 21 people in question can begin voting once ballots, which are going to be mailed out on April 29, have been received. The ballots will be counted on May 23 and if a supermajority of yes is reached, the Game Workers Alliance union will be official and can begin negotiations with Activision Blizzard. 

This news comes months after at least a dozen QA contractors at Raven were laid off. Following that, QA employees at the studio began to strike in response, and soon after that, 34 workers attempted to unionize. Raven 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. Earlier this month, Activision Blizzard converted all of its U.S.-based QA testers to full-time employees with benefits and increased wages, but the company said current Raven workers would not receive the new pay initiatives, “due to legal obligations under the National Labor Relations Board.”

“Whether Raven workers choose to unionize has nothing to do with the salary increases elsewhere for Activision’s QA workers,” an Activision Blizzard spokesperson told Bloomberg at the time. 

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