While two unions under Activision Blizzard enter into contract negotiations, a third subsidiary studio is organized. workers in Boston World of Warcraft Support Studio Proletariat organizes under the Communications Workers of America, just like Raven Software and Blizzard Albany before them. The group of 57 workers of the Proletariat, which includes all positions of the studio except management, is called the Proletariat Workers Alliance. They announced their petition in late December.
Activision Blizzard has not responded to the request for voluntary recognition.
The Proletariat Workers Alliance is committed to securing the company’s current paid time off plan, flexible remote options, healthcare benefits and ensuring transparency and diversity as top priorities. Activision Blizzard did not respond to Polygon’s request for comment.
“At Proletariat, and among our peers across the industry, a lot of us love our jobs,” Dustin Yost, senior engineer at Proletariat, told Polygon. “We at Proletariat take great care of our team. We want to make sure we have a real voice in our future to make a positive impact on our business for the benefit of our team, our business and everyone who enjoys the content we create. The aim here is to be fair to one another.”
Pending Activision Blizzard’s union recognition, the Proletariat Workers Alliance will likely coordinate with the National Labor Relations Board — the same process that both Raven Software and Blizzard Albany’s QA unions have gone through. Activision Blizzard has challenged the choice at both studios, seeking to expand the proposed negotiation entity beyond QA testers.
Companies sometimes struggle to increase the size of a unit in order to dilute the efforts of union organizations and increase the likelihood of a union ballot failing. but an NLRB verdict in 2022 made it easier for organizers to unionize smaller groups within a company (known as micro-units), which puts an obligation on a company to provide overwhelming evidence that a group should be opened up.
CWA has filed multiple unfair labor complaints against Activision Blizzard over alleged anti-union tactics; Activision Blizzard officials have denied any wrongdoing. For the proletariat, expanded unity is unlikely to be a problem: the group is already trying to include all non-senior workers.
Seth Sivak founded Proletariat in 2012 and the studio worked independently, working on games like spellbreak and stream legends until Activision Blizzard acquired the studio in 2022. Sivak is now vice president of development at Blizzard Entertainment and runs the Boston-based Proletariat studio that is now being worked on World of Warcraft
“There was a fear that we might suddenly become part of a larger organization and lose some of the things that made the proletariat special,” Brown said.
She continued: “No matter how much faith we have in management […], things can change. I started in the industry 14 years ago, I’ve been fired more than once. I’ve seen the benefits change and deteriorate. There is no control over it. But when we bargain collectively, when we put these things in writing, there are mechanisms in place to ensure we have a voice.”
Raven Software and Blizzard Albany both won their union elections in 2022. The next step for them is to negotiate a deal with Activision Blizzard; Both unions will have separate contracts. Should the workers of the proletariat vote for their union, they will do the same, again under their own separate contract.
Activision Blizzard’s response to earlier union organizing efforts was at odds with Microsoft’s so-called labor neutrality agreement. The agreement signed with CWA means Microsoft will not interfere in the company’s organizing efforts — with either current Microsoft employees or potential employees joining Microsoft as part of its $68.7 billion deal to acquire Activision Blizzard (currently the subject of a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit).
That agreement was put to the test late last year when QA staff at ZeniMax Media, responsible for franchises like The Elder Scrolls, Doom and Fallout, announced their intention to unionize. Microsoft agreed to recognize the union after a quick vote outside of the NLRB; the company was able to avoid a lot of bureaucracy thanks to the neutrality agreement. ZeniMax QA staff voted through union authorization cards and an online portal where an overwhelming majority of workers pledged their support for the union.
“The proletariat as a company has always had strong values of transparency and respectful cooperation and understands why these values are important to us,” Yost said. “We believe that organizing is the culmination of those values and we want to work with management. We hope they choose to remain neutral and voluntarily recognize our union.”
