Reposted by Reform Gaming Now
Last week, hundreds of CWA members, video game workers, community organizations, and local labor allies held Save Our Devs rallies in the U.S. and Canada to call out layoffs and corporate greed across the industry and to demand fair first contracts across Microsoft’s gaming studios!
![“[Zenimax QA] agreed to a no-strike, no-lockout clause, which effectively says they can't lock us out of work and we can't stop work,” said Mitchell. “That keeps the peace while the contract is alive. But these other units that are still bargaining don’t have those terms, so they have a pretty credible strike threat right now.”
“One interesting thing is that because all of our development units are still in bargaining, currently they all still have that credible strike threat,” Goin added. “That means that the development teams behind World of Warcraft, Elder Scrolls Online, [Bethesda Game Studios]—which includes the Elder Scrolls and Fallout IPs—could all theoretically make a credible strike threat, and we are all part of the same parent union.”
That, of course, would be a particularly drastic course of action, but short of that, union members have already—just this week—held a press conference and spoken out publicly, actions that would have put non-union workers at risk. Meanwhile, CWA continues to negotiate with Microsoft over layoff protections even as the clock ticks down.
“I will say, this should be a galvanizing moment for anyone who's not in a union right now,” said Fatima. “Layoffs are going to happen. If they don't happen now, there's going to be more layoffs in the future. We work at Microsoft.”](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:5gdejlhcswjbzraadoltdpps/bafkreia52gbfy2u2mdvowqbvum3twqpl7qbhqaele72hyv72imuhdm33zi)
