US senator Elizabeth Warren has voiced her support for workers at Proletariat, a US game developer recently acquired by Activision Blizzard. This comes as management at both companies is accused of union busting, as they refuse to voluntarily recognise the employees' organisation efforts.
Due to this, the Proletariat Workers Alliance (PWA) will have to go through the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in order to unionise, holding an anonymous vote among employees. This is despite the workers saying there is already a "supermajority" in favour of unionising, leading them to accuse their management of union busting.
Proletariat, a support studio for World of Warcraft, was bought out by Activision Blizzard last summer. Not formally recognising a union and forcing it to an NLRB vote echoes the tactics Activision Blizzard has taken with other unionisation efforts, seemingly in an attempt to delay workers' rights movements and the ability for industrial action to take place.
Following this latest development, Democrat Elizabeth Warren has voiced her support for the unionising workers, saying that she stands with them in their "fight for fair benefits and working conditions".
This isn't the first time that Warren has weighed in on gaming industry workers' issues. In the first half of 2022, the senator spoke out over Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Alongside fellow Democrat Bernie Sanders, Warren called on the FTC to block the merger if it was believed that it would negatively impact the workers. Warren also proposed the Prohibiting Anticompetitive Mergers Act last April, which would make it much harder for similar deals to take place.
It remains to be seen if any other US politicians come out in support of Proletariat's workers. So far, neither Proletariat nor Activision Blizzard has responded to Warren.
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