I don't agree with Bernie on a lot but I"m totally with him on this.
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
Bernie Sanders pushes for gaming industry unionization
- Thread starter Chindogg
- Start date
I don't agree with Bernie on a lot but I"m totally with him on this.
There are more games than can possibly be played coming out every single week.
When it comes to the interests of megacorporations specifically in the gaming industry, there is a concerning portion of posters on Era that bank hard, hard, hard right wing.
To be fair, it's not like it's only modern history where things are unceremoniously snipped from the history books. Back in the 3rd grade like 20 years ago I went to a Private School where I was taught that there were no Native American issues after the First Thanksgiving, 70% of the South was against slavery but had to use it to keep with the North, and after WWII America became the rightful owners of the world to ensure peace.
...And this was in North Dakota.
I'm sorry to say it, but there's no way Bernie will win the Democratic primary. The Dems and their donors and corporate media spokes people are going to pull out all the stops to kill his campaign. And if he succeeds despite those efforts, they'll straight up rob him at the convention.
I'm not saying this to be cynical. People excited about Bernie need to start preparing for that moment, and seriously think about how to carry his politics forward without him. We need to build durable organizations that aren't controlled by the Democratic party.
Yes Bernie should speak out about unionization of other industries besides video games sometime
Did you read this on the GOP site or just heard it from a rich CEO?
knowing many of the poliera regulars, that's not going to happen, lol
Almost all of this happened over the last 15 years without unions lmao
He has talked about racism forcefully for decades
What would you like him to do differently?
Very nice. Would be great if a few other candidates brought it up as well.
HAHAHAHAHA... Oh, you tell the best jokes, Buzzman. No, I'm sure he's eating crackers here somehow.
HAHAHAHAHA... Oh, you tell the best jokes, Buzzman. No, I'm sure he's eating crackers here somehow.
Suddenly?
I can see him more of a Wind Waker guy.
"This is what climate change will do to us. If it can happen to Hyrule it can happen to America!"
Yes it's 2019 not 1902 so your baseless fear mongering about unions falls on deaf ears here.
I have worked as a game developer for over two decades in many major studios. I think the first step for creating better working conditions and treatments on employees are removing overtime paid exemption for game companies/developers. This exemption is designed to help the tech sector growth, which is not needed anymore. Tech is not a small or niche industry anymore, and it is already generating more profit than the majority of other industries. If companies are required to pay everyone overtime paid, I bet you will see very drastic changes in how companies handle product planning, development schedule, and hiring/layoff.
So, judging from your post, global unionization of the game industry happened around 2008.
I have to honestly wonder if this ist self-parody, or sarcasm a bit too well hidden. In both cases: well played, I had a laugh.
This is one of the most basic functions of a union. What mechanism other than collective bargaining can win such a demand? Arguably state reform, but it would take organizing on an even larger scale to push it against the will of the big companies who fund political campaigns.
I guess what is not clear to me is why the union is the best way to remove such exemption? To my limited knowledge, I don't think such exemption applies to any INDUSTRY. This exemption is not just for the game industry. It applied to any company with a significant tie to tech.
This was one of the changes EA adopted for junior employees/new grads after "EA Spouse". Those employees are non-exempt for their first couple years and paid overtime for any extra hours.
If one game company was to unionize with this as a key demand, first of all, it would be huge on its own. But it would also put incredible pressure on other companies who don't want a union to match the demand. Here's the liberal Economic Policy Institute (a thinktank which advocates for regulated markets) with more detail:
EPI said:
Neat. Do whatever you want with the industry as long as I don't have to pay more and games don't take forever.
You know what I love about the anti Union sentiment in the game dev circles?
VA are getting better treatment than your average engine dev or game designer because their unions made sure they weren't getting fleeced.
Why do people want game devs to be treated more poorly than voice talent is beyond me.
Also in some countries, game devs are already in unions because it's mandated that union representatives from the employee pool are present during board meetings and the likes.
But sure keep licking the boots of executives, I'm sure some of that juicy juicy sweat will drop from them to wet your parched tongue.
VA are getting better treatment than your average engine dev or game designer because their unions made sure they weren't getting fleeced.
Why do people want game devs to be treated more poorly than voice talent is beyond me.
Also in some countries, game devs are already in unions because it's mandated that union representatives from the employee pool are present during board meetings and the likes.
But sure keep licking the boots of executives, I'm sure some of that juicy juicy sweat will drop from them to wet your parched tongue.
One of the most uninformed posts of all time here at ERA. This is so ignorant it's borderline stupid.
What exactly is the implication of this mongoloid paraphrasing shit? Spit it out
Edit whe lol overreaction ahoy lol. I'm sorry, that thing makes my eye twitch.
I'm from Brazil, 91% of Unions in the world are brazilian. Yeah, that worked alright.
Half the population or something living below the minimum wage in informal jobs, and an infinity of bureaucracy and hardships for entrepreneurs.
Let's put employees against employers, that should work.
I find it frightening how a generation of privileged kids is leaning towards socialism.
Half the population or something living below the minimum wage in informal jobs, and an infinity of bureaucracy and hardships for entrepreneurs.
Let's put employees against employers, that should work.
I find it frightening how a generation of privileged kids is leaning towards socialism.
What essentially happening is you will get "promote" to mid-level/senior as soon as they pay you more in OT than other non-exempt employees.
I think there are those who view unionization as a panacea for the videogame industry. I think there will be some benefits. For example, if, as the Time article stated, unionized pension and health care were to come into existence; however, in terms of helping with crunch, or the use of independent contractors over full-time employees, or even for folks keeping their job between projects, I do not think there will be as positive an effect as others do.
Man, I knew Era had its share of corporate bootlickers, but this is a bit much.
Lol S'all good!
That sentiment makes my eyes twitch as a dismissive excuse for all the shitty things done in the name of "Business be business and you naive fuckers need to deal "
In any workplace, the workers are in conflict with their bosses for a bigger portion of the profits. Profits are primarily the unpaid wages derived from the value of the the goods produced. There are other factors like labor-saving automation, varying costs of raw materials, etc. But these tend to factor out as competitors apply the same methods while also competing on price. Wages are the most malleable cost input, and the work performed by human workers is source of surplus value.
A union *helps* workers in their conflict with bosses. Without a union, individual rockstar workers might be able to negotiate themselves a better deal, but for the most part an individual does not have leverage against the boss. With a union, all workers have a crucial weapon in negotiating a better deal for all: the strike. It takes serious trust building, class consciousness, and shared sacrifice to use a strike effectively, but it is the most powerful tool we have.
So I agree, simply forming a union is not a panacea. Most of the actually-existing union bureaucracies long ago made deals with the corporate bosses they're supposed to oppose. But organized collective bargaining is just about the only way that workers can make demands on their bosses and win. Fighting for unions, and fighting for rank-and-file democracy in the existing unions is crucially important to winning a better standard of living for all of us.
No, the motivation is to establish a financial cost to crunching, beyond the many other but less fungible costs. I think EA, more than most big publishers/developers, is serious about improving studio culture and work/life balance. It is the ethical thing to do, and an essential part of retaining (senior) talent.
Because there's two ways to get rid of the problem with unpaid overtime. You can go the legislative route, or you can do it incrementally by forcing the industry to end the process.
Legislatively fixing the problem is a great idea. It also would require that the pro-labor left (which I use in contrast to just "Democrats" which includes a number of centrists who only avoid looking like total corporate bootlickers by contrasting themselves to Republicans) to have an extraordinary amount of national political power. You're talking either 2/3rds majorities of both chambers of Congress, or the Presidency, control of the House, and at least 60 votes in the Senate. The last part, the Senate control, is not likely in the near future.
From just the perspective of fixing the overtime exemption, the legislative route is a lot better. It's just also much, much, much more difficult. Which leaves us with the other option, which is empowering labor by organizing and trying to eliminate the exemption by driving it out of the industry from that side.
Unionization also helps with a bunch of other issues that have cropped up due to the overwhelming imbalance in power that corporations have been buying their way into over the last several decades. But it's not the end-all be all, it's just the necessary first step. You're not going to suddenly solve all the problems of the games industry just because you have unions, but without the union, the task of fixing the industry goes from difficult to virtually impossible.
Yep. Sanders' career as an independent socialist for the last 30 years has been incredible. But now progressives and socialists have a real quandry to navigate: we have no mass movement, no powerful working class organizations to speak of, and we're trying to take the top seat of global capitalist imperialism. Even if Sanders were to win, the power of the individual is not strong enough to overcome to material conditions of the day.
In 2015, a "radical left" party named SYRIZA took power in Greece on a mandate to end the budget cut agreements imposed on the country as a condition of loans from the Eurozone banks (aka the "troika"). Greece had been a financial disaster for decades and these ongoing loans were necessary to basically keep the country's head above water. But the banks demanded more and more cuts, and the people elected SYRIZA as a way to resist the Troika. On the eve of the crucial decision whether to accept another round of cuts, SYRIZA called a national referendum: Either stay in the eurozone and accept the terms of the loan, or reject the terms of the loan and leave the eurozone (at great risk to the stability of the country itself). 61% of the public voted to reject the terms. However, instead of following the results of the referendum, the leadership of SYRIZA accepted the terms, and began to expel party members who insisted that "Grexit" was the only way forward.
Something similar would almost certainly happen to Bernie Sanders if he managed to become the president. There are extremely powerful forces at work who oppose his social democratic program. Just medicare for all alone is in concrete terms an existential question for the powerful health insurance industry. They're not going to allow a politician to simply sign away at 600B industry. The US working class does not have the collective power it needs to overcome those forces. As tempting as it is to believe we can vote our way to a bright Scandinavian future, it's a mirage. We need to (re)build a mass worker's movement from the ground up. Sanders knows this, and says it often. But I don't think the message is getting through.