Leadership at Proletariat, the developer behind Spellbreak that was acquired by Activision Blizzard to assist on World of Warcraft, won’t voluntarily recognize worker unionization efforts. Instead, leadership has filed for a union vote through the National Labor Relations Board.
Members of Proletariat formed the Proletariat Workers Alliance with help from the Communication Workers of America in December in response to the studio’s acquisition. In a new blog post, Proletariat leadership describes themselves as “pro-worker,” pointing out that the studio’s name derives from the dissatisfaction the studio’s founders experienced elsewhere in the video game industry. Leadership states that choosing to seek a NLRB election over voluntarily recognizing the new studio union is more fair and “allows employees to get all the information and various points of view.”
In response to @proletariat_inc leadership’s blog in which it declined to voluntarily recognize the supermajority of @WeArePWA_CWA signed cards + force the union to a vote with the NLRB, Proletariat workers have released a statement:
“Everyone deserves a union.” 1/— CODE-CWA (@CODE_CWA) January 10, 2023
Members of the Proletariat Workers Alliance disagree. In a statement through CWA, the Proletariat Workers Alliance states that management’s actions have not been “pro-worker” and instead have come “right out of the union-busting playbook used by Activision and so many others.” The union states that a recent “town hall” meeting at the studio was demonstrably anti-union, and occurred the same day that ZeniMax Workers United announced their union had been voluntarily recognized by parent-company Microsoft.