On the unionization frontlines with Autumn Mitchell, Emma Kinema and Chris Lusco: Game Developer Podcast Ep. 45

This week resulted in not one, but two major victories for the ongoing unionization efforts that are gradually gaining steam in the video game industry. First, Bethesda Game Studios successfully formed a “wall-to-wall union” at Microsoft— consisting of more than 200 employees across multiple disciplines—in the lingering shadow of major layoffs and studio closures earlier this year. And not long thereafter, the entire development staff of World of Warcraft formed the World of Warcraft Game Makers Guild at Blizzard Entertainment, another Microsoft-owned company.

To learn more about the organization movement sweeping our industry, Game Developer Senior Editor Bryant Francis spoke to Emma Kinema of the Communications Workers of America, which spearheaded both of this week’s accomplishments, as well as Autumn Mitchell and Chris Lusco of Bethesda Softworks, to get the inside perspective on why unions are useful, how they function, the deal with all those bad unions you keep hearing about, and a lot more. Produced by Jordan Mallory and with music by Mike Meehan, this is episode 45 of the Game Developer Podcast.

Every conversation about unions (video game or otherwise) comes with its own complementary elephant in the room: Aren’t unions bad, actually? Don’t they just make it harder to do your job? Well according to Kinema, a union is only as good as the people at the helm, just like any other democratic institution.

Unions are only as good as the people at the helm, as with most organizations

“There's an argument to be said that the democratic functions [of a union] can be taken over for bad means—it's true,” Kinema said. “And there is a rich history of labor organizing, especially dating far back into like the twenties through the sixties, where there were issues with, for instance, the mafia getting involved with the teamsters.”

But such instances are often the result of institutional and exterior influence, according to Kinema. “Often that was the police working with the mafia to infiltrate and take over leadership of those unions, and usually that followed when there was previous progressive or socialist leadership of those unions who then got purged because of government regulations [and] 'red scare’ type stuff.” 

“So you have to understand that history,” she said. “When you purge progressive leadership from the union movement, what follows is reactionary leadership in the union movement, right?”

Unions can lead to meaningful change

Mitchell argues that in the right hands, a union can not only affect meaningful change in an individual’s workplace, but also for everyone else working in the United States. 

“Unions are huge for pushing workers’ rights to legislation,” she said. “Workers unions are why we have ‘eight hours a day, five days a week,’ they're why we have child labor laws, they're why we have sick leave, paternity leave, maternity leave.” 

But it has to be a concerted effort, she adds. “It's not like one little union from a Kentucky coal mine decided 'Hey, I only want to do eight hours a day.’ That took way more, they had to get together. They all had to work together to accomplish that and to achieve that and to push for legislation for that to become reality.”