Yesterday, employees astatine Raven Software staged a walk-out protesting past week's surprise layoffs of a twelve of its QA section contractors. The terminations created an uproar wrong the Call of Duty enactment studio, arsenic the firings affected a reported 3rd of its full QA team. Furthermore, respective terminated employees had precocious been hired and relocated to the studio’s Madison, Wisconsin bureau – successful immoderate instances, retired of their ain pockets. The protests proceed today, and workers astatine different Activision Blizzard offices person joined in.
According to The Washington Post, the virtual walk-out began astatine 10:15 americium Eastern. It's unclear however galore employees are participating, but it includes QA unit from Activision Blizzard’s Minnesota and Texas offices arsenic good arsenic those astatine Blizzard’s Irvine California headquarters. They request that each QA workers, including those fired, beryllium offered full-time positions wrong the company. Activision Blizzard sent its authoritative effect to the Post saying, “We enactment their close to explicit their opinions and concerns successful a harmless and respectful manner, without fearfulness of retaliation.”
Today workers from Raven QA are walking retired for the 2nd time successful a row. They are joined by workers from QATX, QAMN, and Blizzard QA. These workers are lasting successful solidarity with the connection Raven QA enactment guardant yesterday. They are utilizing the societal media hashtag #WeAreRaven
— ABetterABK 💙 ABK Workers Alliance (@ABetterABK) December 7, 2021Raven workplace caput Brian Raffel reportedly apologized to unit for the muddled communication, stating that the layoffs are really the workplace choosing not to renew impermanent employment agreements. Yesterday, an Activision Blizzard spokesperson reached retired to Game Informer with a connection clarifying that the layoffs are portion of a broader restructuring:
"Activision Publishing is increasing its wide concern successful its improvement and operations resources. We are converting astir 500 impermanent workers to full-time employees successful the coming months. Unfortunately, arsenic portion of this change, we besides person notified 20 impermanent workers crossed studios that their contracts would not beryllium extended."
The walkout is being shared connected Twitter utilizing the hashtag “WeAreRaven,” with galore manufacture workers sharing threads with occupation openings for the soon-to-be unemployed workers arsenic good their ain experiences moving with Activision. This week's events mark Activision’s 3rd worker walkout successful 5 months. The archetypal occurred connected July 28 to protestation Activision’s arguable effect to the State of California’s ongoing intersexual harassment lawsuits. The 2nd walk-out took spot November 16 aft a Wall Street Journal study revealed that Activision CEO Bobby Kotick was alert for years of Activision’s intersexual maltreatment problems but withheld that cognition from the publisher's committee of directors.
[Source: The Washington Post]
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