Proletariat Caves In To Activision Blizzard’s Anti-Union Tactics And Scraps Union Vote

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Not all unionizing efforts are destined for a happy ending, especially when a big bad bully is doing everything it can to stop it. Over the past few months, Activision Blizzard has been actively trying to derail the formation of worker unions in several of its studios, including Raven Software, Blizzard, Albany, and Proletariat.

Unfortunately, the company has succeeded in stopping a union vote at Proletariat, which the Communication Workers of America blames on the studio’s CEO Seth Sivak. “Sivak chose to follow Activision-Blizzard’s lead and responded to the workers’ desire to form a union with confrontational tactics,” said the worker group. “Like many founders, he took the workers’ concerns as a personal attack and held a series of meetings that demoralized and disempowered the group, making a free and fair election impossible.”

Proletariat is one of the newest studios to join Activision Blizzard and was acquired by the latter last summer to help Blizzard with World of Warcraft. Its employees officially announced their plans to hold a union vote just after Christmas after they secured supermajority support from other staffers. The studio’s leadership and Activision Blizzard’s management promptly responded to the announcement with anti-union meetings and refused to discuss the matter while insisting that their goal was to assure that everyone had a voice.

Microsoft, however, has had a more favorable stance on the formation of unions which will hopefully rub off on Activision Blizzard should their high-profile merger push through.