On Tuesday, August 18, video game workers, community organizations, elected officials and local labor allies will hold coordinated “Save Our Devs” rallies across the United States and Canada to call out layoffs and corporate greed in the industry, and to demand fair first contracts across Microsoft’s gaming studios, which now represent nearly 4,000 unionized video game workers with the Communications Workers of America (CWA).
CWA-represented XBOX workers are the developers, artists, engineers, producers, user researchers, and customer support staff behind some of the video game industry’s most profitable games, such as Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Overwatch, World of Warcraft, and more.
Last month, Microsoft announced over 3,200 planned XBOX layoffs and the shuttering of several XBOX gaming studios, with the first phase of layoffs scheduled to impact 1,600 XBOX workers, including hundreds of union members, in early September.
As a result, workers and gamers alike have engaged in unprecedented resistance to Microsoft’s unilateral actions. After an immediate press conference where XBOX workers demanded layoff protections, over 500 workers and allies rallied at studio locations across the U.S. and Canada last month. Fans of the franchise also posted on Microsoft’s official fan feedback website to call out the layoffs, garnering over 4,000 upvotes and nearly 900 comments on the XBOX Player Voice forum. On July 15th, CWA also filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), alleging several labor law violations that require the employer to engage in decisional bargaining over discretionary layoffs.
These coordinated rallies come on the heels of XBOX’s flagship gaming convention, BlizzCon, after a two-year hiatus, which is scheduled to take place September 12th in Anaheim, California.
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The Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (CODE-CWA) is a network of worker-organizers and their staff working every single day to build the voice and power necessary to ensure the future of the tech, game, and digital industries in the United States and Canada. CODE-CWA is a project of the Communications Workers of America which represents hundreds of thousands of workers throughout tech, media, telecom, and other industries who stand together to fight for justice on the job and in our communities.