Workiversaries in the game industry are bittersweet these days. It’s tricky celebrating career milestones when it seems like every other week, hundreds of people lose their livelihoods all at once. For CD Projekt Red localization QA analyst Paula Mackiewicz-Armstrong, who recently hit eight years with the studio, it’s simply a moment of gratitude for stability in a very unstable environment.
“It’s quite strange reflecting on it, cause instead of celebrating achievements or releases, my thoughts turn to the situation in the industry,” Mackiewicz-Armstrong writes in a recent Linkedin post. “Here I am, 8 years and counting, and over at Epic, 1000 people just lost their jobs.”
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In Mackiewicz-Armstrong’s view, employees aren’t entirely helpless against corporate bodies desperate to please investors.
“If I can have one piece of advice for all of you out there, unionise,” she says. “Collectively, we can influence things. Individually, we are at the mercy of the market.” Mackiewicz-Armstrong specifically points to the Polish Gamedev Workers Union as a resource for Poland-based game industry workers. “Let’s all look out for each other,” she says.
While union contracts typically can’t prevent an employer from laying off workers, they can stipulate how something like that is done. For example, union leadership can negotiate with employers to prevent layoffs due to AI, afford employees ample warning time in the event of layoffs, and ensure severance pay. That said, major studios including Ubisoft and Rockstar have been accused of union-busting in recent years, with Ubisoft shutting down Ubisoft Halifax in January just days after it announced the certification of its labor union.
Regardless, unionization is definitely one of the tools game devs have at their disposal that can help them regain some semblance of control amid ongoing turbulence. Unfortunately for all too many former employees now looking for work, that opportunity is taken from them before they can begin to organize.
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