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Activision Blizzard said Thursday that an internal investigation found there was “no evidence” that senior executives ignored or attempted to conceal reports of sexual harassment at the Santa Monica-based video game publisher, while also disputing that “there was ever a systemic issue with harassment, discrimination or retaliation” at the company.
The “Call of Duty” developer did acknowledge that there were “some substantiated instances of gender harassment” at the company, it said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commssion. It added, however, that those instances “do not support the conclusion that Activision senior leadership or the board [of directors] were aware of and tolerated gender harassment.”
The findings run counter to a bombshell Wall Street Journal report that claimed Activision CEO Bobby Kotick knew of and failed to report allegations of rape, sexual assault and workplace misconduct to the company’s board of directors. The report prompted walkouts by Activision employees, many of whom joined Activision investors in calling for Kotick’s resignation.
Since then, Kotick has arranged for Activision to be acquired by tech giant Microsoft in a $69 billion transaction that would be the video game industry’s largest-ever merger. Activision has also faced multiple sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuits from current and former employees, with such claims also being investigated by regulators at both the state and federal level.
On Thursday, Activision said that it had hired Gilbert Casellas, a former chair of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), to investigate the allegations against the company. The EEOC is the same agency that struck an $18 million settlement with Activision last fall over the claims.
Casellas’ review “concluded that there was no widespread harassment, pattern or practice of harassment, or systemic harassment at Activision Blizzard or at any of its business units” from September 2016 through December 2021, the company said. Additionally, Casellas “concluded that, based on the volume of reports, the amount of misconduct reflected is comparatively low for a company the size of Activision Blizzard,” which currently employs roughly 10,000 people worldwide and said it has employed over 25,000 in the last decade.
Activision also took aim at “an unrelenting barrage of media criticism that attempts to paint the entire company (and many innocent employees) with the stain of a very small portion of our employee population who engaged in bad behavior and were disciplined for it.” It also labeled the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing’s ongoing lawsuit against it as “highly inflammatory” and containing “made-for-press allegations,” and criticized the department’s “efforts to interfere with the EEOC settlement.”
Activision workers’ advocacy group ABetterABK criticized the company’s findings in an extensive Twitter thread on Thursday, describing them as “tone deaf” and taking particular aim at Kotick’s prior actions.
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Microsoft took an unexpected step toward sanctioning a unionized workforce at Activision Blizzard today by agreeing to remain neutral if any of the Santa Monica-based video game publisher’s roughly 10,000 employees decide to form a union.
The Seattle tech giant—which is currently in the midst of acquiring Activision for nearly $70 billion—has struck a labor neutrality deal with the Communications Workers of America (CWA), the labor organization backing the newly formed Game Workers Alliance union at Activision subsidiary Raven Software.
The agreement, first reported by the Washington Post, calls for Microsoft to “take a neutral approach when [Activision] employees covered by the agreement express interest in joining a union,” Microsoft and the CWA said in a joint statement Monday. That would make it easier for Activision employees to unionize, and expedite the often time-consuming process of certifying a labor union by side-stepping measures like a National Labor Relations Board-sponsored election.
The deal, which would take effect 60 days after Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision is finalized, follows on Microsoft’s recent statements that it would not block labor organizing efforts at the video game developer—a philosophy which company president Brad Smith recently expanded on in a blog post. It also comes in the wake of Activision’s announcement on Friday that it would commence labor negotiations with the Raven Software union.
The CWA agreement “means that we respect the rights of our employees to make informed decisions on their own,” Smith told the Post. “It means that we don’t try to put a thumb on the scale to influence or pressure them. We give people the opportunity to exercise their right to choose by voting.”
Activision employees active in workplace organizing efforts at the company praised the Microsoft-CWA deal on Monday. Jessica Gonzalez, a former Activision employee-turned-CWA organizer told dot.LA that “it is the strongest agreement that I’ve ever seen between a major corporation and a union in my life.”
“Maybe [Microsoft] wanted to be on the right side of history… Maybe they just want this [Activision] deal to go through and were like, ‘You know what—we'll let the employees unionize, it’s going to make us money anyway,’” Gonzalez said. She described the agreement as “a show of good faith” by Microsoft.
Emily Knief, an Activision motion graphics designer involved in worker advocacy group ABetterABK, said she believes the agreement will encourage further labor organizing efforts at the video game company. “This, to me, signals that [unionization at Activision] will happen,” Knief told dot.LA. “It’s almost an inevitability at this point.”
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Activision Blizzard will begin labor negotiations with recently unionized workers at its Raven Software subsidiary, the Santa Monica-based video game publisher said today.
Activision CEO Bobby Kotick sent a letter to employees Friday morning stating that the company will “engage in good faith negotiations to enter into a collective bargaining agreement” with the Communications Workers of America, the labor union representing the 27 organized quality assurance testers at Wisconsin-based Raven Software.
“While first labor contracts can take some time to complete, we will meet CWA leaders at the bargaining table and work toward an agreement that supports the success of all our employees,” Kotick wrote in the letter.
The CEO noted that Activision has recently taken measures to increase pay for quality assurance testers and turned temporary jobs into full-time positions—though the unionized Raven Software, all of whom are full-time employees, were notably excluded from pay raises earlier this year. ABetterABK, an Activision workers’ group that has mobilized the company’s Los Angeles-area employees, tweeted Friday that those measures “were done as concessions from mounting employee pressure to try to stop unionization from occurring.”
After forming in January, Raven Software’s Game Workers Alliance union was officially certified in a vote last month—solidifying the first labor union at a major video game publisher in the U.S. and legally obligating Activision to negotiate with the union on a collective bargaining agreement.
The vote came after Activision refused to voluntarily recognize the union despite Microsoft—which is in the midst of acquiring Activision for around $69 billion—stating that it “will not stand in the way” of unionization efforts. Microsoft president Brad Smith expanded on those views in a blog post earlier this month, laying out “a new set of principles” around how it would engage with organized workers.- Raven Software Forms Labor Union Following Microsoft Deal - dot.LA ›
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