At an industry conference for video game developers in late March, the thousands of lanyarded attendees could try new games, swap business cards and hear from experts on rendering realistic blood spatter.
Or they could talk about unionizing.
Hundreds joined a series of standing-room-only roundtables on the topic of organized labor, taking time away from the Game Developers Conference to brainstorm ways to build worker power in an industry that is almost entirely nonunion.
Kathryn Kranhold
on Wednesday, April 17 2019 - 11:21am
Taxpayers are scrambling to make last-minute payments due to the Internal Revenue Service in just four days, but many of the country’s largest publicly-held corporations are doing better: They’ve reported they owe absolutely nothing on the billions of dollars in profits they earned last year.
Kayla Blado and Katie Barrows
on Thursday, April 4 2019 - 10:48am
In 2018, women once again came home with over 16% less money in their paychecks. Tuesday is Equal Pay Day, which means women had to work until April 2—92 days longer—to be paid the same amount as a comparable man in 2018.
David J. Lynch
on Thursday, April 4 2019 - 10:28am
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested Tuesday that President Trump must reopen talks with Canada andMexicoto tighten enforcement provisions in a proposed North American trade deal, casting renewed doubt on prospects for congressional ratification of the accord.
“I’m not anti-union, but I don’t really think we need them, right?” said Double Fine head Tim Schafer while hostingyesterday evening’s Game Developers Choice Awardsin San Francisco. “We’re all great here and in this show. No one here is union and...” Then the stage lights went out.
“Oh, right,” said Schafer after the lights went out. “Except for the lighting crew. I forgot they’re all union.”
Alexia Fernández Campbell
on Tuesday, March 19 2019 - 10:40am
A four-year fight to expand overtime pay to millions of workers may soon be over. About 1.2 million workers will win and 2.8 million will lose.
The Department of Labor is scaling back an Obama-era rule that would have doubled the maximum salary for a worker to qualify for overtime pay, accordingto a proposed rulethe agency sent to the Office of the Federal Register for public review.
On Feb. 15, just days after massive layoffs at Activision Blizzard, the AFL-CIO issued a powerful public statement of support to game developers in the United States. Its message, published in an open letter at Kotaku, was both simple and profound.
Black leaders, activists, and organizersformed the backbone of the U.S. labor movement. Even when the forces of structural racism and segregation sought to stifle their contributions, their resolve to fight for workers’ rights alongside the cause of civil rights remained unshakable. Black women, in particular, have played an enormous role in the movement’s legacy and development.
