Microsoft and Activision video game workers take steps to unionize

Microsoft remained neutral on bid to unionize as Xbox maker seeks regulatory approval for its acquisition of Activision.

A few months after Microsoft announced its intention to acquire video game maker Activision Blizzard, the tech giant said it would remain neutral if Activision workers were looking to unionize once the deal was done. Today, a major labor union is testing Microsoft's appetite for unionization at a company it already owns.

A group of over 300 ZeniMax Media employees , a Maryland-based video game company owned by Microsoft, has begun voting on whether to form the company's only union in the United States.

The Voting, among quality assurance employees at ZeniMax, which includes top studios like Bethesda Game Studios, is taking place under an informal agreement in which Microsoft remains neutral. Workers can sign a union authorization card, as some began doing last month, or weigh in anonymously for or against unionization on an electronic platform that opened on Friday.

The process concludes at the end of the month and is more efficient than a typical union election, which is overseen by the National Labor Relations Board and may involve legal wrangling over the terms of the election.

On the same day that voting began at Microsoft, a group of quality assurance, or Q.A., workers at an Activision-owned studio near Albany, N.Y., won a union vote, 14 to 0. This result follows a successful union vote in May by about two dozen Q.A. employees of an Activision studio in Wisconsin, a first for a major North American video game manufacturer. Microsoft's planned acquisition of Activision for about $70 billion is under antitrust scrutiny by regulators. both companies have been placed under the auspices of the Communications Workers of America, which also represents employees of telecommunications companies like Verizon and media companies like The New York Times.

Together, the developments seem to be giving momentum to a wave of unionization over the past year at previously non-union companies like Amazon, Starbucks and Apple. Recent campaigns also suggest that video game workers, who have complained for years of long hours, low wages, sexual harassment and discrimination, may be increasingly receptive to unionization.

A union of 300 workers would be "pretty revolutionary" and could propel Q.A. workers, and even other game workers like developers, to unionize at other major studios, said Johanna Weststar, an associate professor at the University of Western Ontario who studies labor in the industry .

A Microsoft spokeswoman said the organizing drive was "an example of our labor principles in action" and that the company remained "committed to provide employees with the ability to make free and fair choices about their representation in the workplace."

< p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">Labour campaign at Microsoft would affect Q.A. employees of several game studios that are part of ZeniMax Media, including Bethesda, which makes successful franchises like The Elder Scrolls and Fallout.

Microsoft, which makes the Xbox series of consoles, acquired ZeniMax for $7.5 billion, a splashy pandemic buy that helped...