A group of QA workers at Call Of Duty studio Raven Software have officially signed off on their first union contract with parent company Microsoft and COD publisher Activision-Blizzard, in the run-up to the launch of Call Of Duty: Black Ops 7. The contract is the result of years of negotiations, and offers some protection against the treatment of QA workers as disposable staff – hired to quash bugs shortly before release and laid off soon afterwards, with minimal odds of personal development or progression to other roles.
According to a release from the Game Workers Alliance-CWA – who won the right to unionise in 2022 against the backdrop of Microsoft’s efforts to buy Activision-Blizzard – the contract includes stipulations for the “elimination of crunch time”, though “containment” is perhaps the more appropriate term. Managers will have to supply seven days notice of mandatory overtime, and give employees flexibility over scheduling. There will be “no excessive overtime on back-to-back weeks”, or “mandatory overtime of any duration for the majority of weeks in a quarter”.
The contract also includes “a guaranteed 10-percent wage increase over two years with additional raises through merit and promotions, after going 18 months without wage increases and 45 months without promotions”. It makes provision for more “defined” job descriptions and a more transparent promotion process, together with “expanded disability accommodations, and layoff protections including severance, recall rights, generous COBRA subsidies, and career transition services.” As separately reported by Shannon Liao, the contract gives most of the QA team’s 19, Wisconsin-based workers permission to permanently work from home.
“How do you progress within QA? How do you get promoted? How do you get a raise?” Autumn Prazuch, a Raven Software QA tester and bargaining member, told Liao. “For so long we haven’t had those [answers], to be able to curate them with the company and come to an agreement… that I think is our crowning achievement, the thing that I’m most proud of.”
Again, all this is the result of much hard wrangling with the big M, A and B. Last September, Nic interviewed CWA members about different approaches to unionisation and how employers may try to thwart it.
