CWA, the largest media union in the United States, recently filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board against a company called Lionbridge Technologieswhich is described as a “Microsoft supplier“. According to what was indicated, this company fired an entire team of QA workers (i.e. those who test and verify the quality of video games while providing support to developers) for trying to unionize.
According to the CWA post, the Idaho-based team included 160 workers who were all fired by the company, Lionbridge Technologies. The company allegedly told workers that their project was over, making the layoffs necessary.
The source claims that teams assigned to the same project in Mexico and Poland continued working on it even after the Idaho team disbanded. The project was specifically associated with Activision, owned by Microsoft.
The only one reason for dismissal it would be an attempt to unionize, according to the accusation.
Other similar situations have occurred in the past
It should also be noted that this is not the first time that Lionbridge has been accused of trying to block the creation of unions. In 2016, the company fired all union-affiliated employees after contracting a group of temporary workers. At the time, the company’s lawyer blamed the layoffs on a reduction in available work.
Over the past two years, Microsoft, which owns Activision, has made some decisions that seemed to signal a certain openness towards trade union actions in the video game industry, which has long been union-free. In 2022, the company formally recognized a QA union at Bethesda and ZeniMax consisting of approximately 300 employees, which was the largest video game union in the United States at the time.
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